tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406Sun, 02 Aug 2015 13:41:55 +0000giant thiefCrown ThiefAngry RobotEndangered WeaponFilm RamblePrince ThiefBob MolesworthFunlandFantasyConLavie Tidharbritish fantasy societyrafe mcgregorLightspeedSmall PressTo End All Warsthe living deadDark Tales of Lost CivilisationsJenny's Sicktheaker's quarterly fictionAdrian TchaikovskyBull Specflash fiction onlinestephen theakerstockholm syndromeAlasdair StuartCaretaker in the Garden of DreamsEric Guignardandromeda spaceways inflight magazineDuncan KayEasterconNecrotic TissueResearch CornerSpectral PresspseudopodNine WorldsPaul CornellPrisoner of PeaceRindelstein's Monstersjohn joseph adamsthe burning roomzombonautsClarkesworldComet PressDigital Science FictionFuturequake PressIan SalesJonathan GreenThe Death PanelThe Painted CityWar For FunlandZenomurky depths01 PublishingAcross the TerminatorAfter DeathBards and Sages QuarterlyBeneath Ceaseless SkiesBlack SunBram Stoker AwardsBrilliance AudioDegeneratesDuotrope's DigestFree Comic Book DayGeoff NelderIan WhatesIll-Met at MidnightJames LangtonMangaquakeMarkosiaNightmarePatchwerkSFWASFXThe Bad NeighbourWhispers From the AbyssWriting Ramblesomething wickedstrive to be happyAdam ChristopherAlison J LittlewoodAngelo RinaldiC21st GodsDavid James KeatonEscape VelocityFall From GraceFantasy FactionFear of a Blue Goo PlanetFeelerHauntedIm Schatten Der GigantenIt's Easier to Pretend in the DarkKings of the RealmLawrence AxeLee HarrisNorthern Frights PublishingPill Hill PressSharkpunkSimon Marshall-JonesSlices of FleshThe Door Beyond the WaterThe Untold GhostTwitcherfrom the asylumin the service of the gunsmy friend fishfinger by daisy aged 7the other ten thousandthe unleashing of the ineffectualA Shadow PlayAdrift on the Sea of RainsAliette de BodardAnne LyleBallistaBritish Fantasy AwardsCopyright InfringementDark Moon BooksEasie DamascoElectric VelocipedeEncountersFallenFor LifeForbidden PlanetFrighfestGame RambleGav ThorpeInterzoneJobeda AliMike MignolaMike ShevdonNil DesperandumRedstone Science FictionShadowcastShelter of DaylightSurvivor GuiltThe Sign in the MoonlightThis is HorrorThought BubbleTransfusionVariant FrequenciesWunderkindXIIIchaos theorychiaroscurodark horizonsflashfiction.netfuturequakehadley rille booksjake freivaldog's speculative fictionpassive resistancepeachysam montgomery-blinnspace and timethings aren't what they seemA Fantastical LibrarianA Stare From the DarknessA Twist Too FarAEAbyss and ApexAl EwingAlison LittlewoodAmanda C DavisAnimeAnne ZanoniBSFA AwardsBlack HorticultureBlack Matrix PublishingDan AbnettDancing in the Winter RoomsDevilry at the Hanging Tree InnDinocorpsEllen DatlowFantasy Book ReviewFinal RelocationFirst DateFriendlyGeorge R R MartinGlass HousesGug-ShabethHand That FeedsHorror Writers AssociationJ A KonrathJoe AbercrombieJohn KlimaJuliet E McKennaKaleidotropeMatchMatt EdgintonMorpheus TalesMur LaffertyNo Rest For the WickedPhase IVPiper VerlagPrincess MononokeSF SignalSam's Dot PublishingShadows of the AptSome Theories Regarding the Current CrisisStarburstThe Death God's ChosenThe DrabblecastThe Glass ParachuteThe Shark in the HeartThe Way of the LeavesToday the War EndedTor.ComTroll HunterTwilight For the NightingaleTwo Days LaterWW1War of the RatsWarpcore SFWhite ThorneWorld Fantasy Conventionallotmentdoppelgangerhubimaginary prisonslibrary of the deadstephen kingthe architect of murderthe desert cold.easterconA Study in Red and WhiteAdrian FaulknerAdventure Books of SeattleAdventures FantasicAkiraAlfred Hitchcock's Mystery MagazineAlys SterlingAndrew KnightonAnna CaltabianoApexArthur C ClarkeAuthors UnitedBSFABad Times to be in the Wrong PlaceBarry NugentBe the BardBec ZugorBechdel TestBen WilsherBenedict JackaBill CampbellBlack StaticBr(Other)Bryony PearceC E MurphyChina MievilleCity of EmberCivilian ReaderConservationistsCovenCristian OrtizDMCA Takedown NoticeDancing in the Winter RoomDanie WareDen PatrickDouglas PrestonDownton AbbeyDunsanyEd BrubakerEdge LitElloise HopkinsEmma NewmanFantasy MagazineFrancis KnightGaiaGareth L PowellGene WolfeGhost in the ShellGriefcomHachetteHouse of the DevilJaine FennJanine AshblessJeff VanderMeerJessica StriderJoe HaldemanJoe R LansdaleJohn DeNardoJohn HobkinsonJohn MeaneyJosh FinneyJourneyJustin Lee MuskJustine Lee MuskKill ListKim Lakin-SmithKitschiesKnock KnockLame Goat PressLamplightLimboLivia LlewellynLos Alamos 1945MachenMarc GascoigneMartinMetropolisMhairi SimpsonMichael WilsonMidnight SonMolly TanzerMy Favourite BooksNaNoWriMoNameless DigestNeil GaimanNewcon PressNir YanivOrbitOrson Scott CardOsamaOur World of HorrorOwlcat MountainP S PublishingPantheon MagazineParsec AwardsPaul LewisPrime BooksPrimerPulsePurple Sun PressR Scott McCoyReflection's EdgeRobert RankinRon SmithRos JacksonRosariumRosemary SmithSFRevuSamuel Montgomery-BlinnSara Jane TownsendSci-Fi WeekenderScott AndrewsScott LynchShimmerSimon ClarkSimon GuerrierSlow DrowningSnow BooksSnowbooksStan SwansonStephen AryanSteve GuttenbergSteve LockleyStrange ChemistryStrange HorizonsSummer WarsSuper Relaxed Fantasy ClubTake ShelterThaumatropeThe AddictionThe BoxThe CallerThe DivideThe Eye With Which The Universe Beholds ItselfThe GuardianThe Hair of the HoundThe HobbitThe House That Cordone BuiltThe InnkeepersThe Lord of FeathersThe Newbie's Guide to Publishing BookThe QwilleryThe UpliftedThe Wicker ManThe Wicker TreeThen Will the Great Ocean Wash Deep AboveTheresa DerwinThrough Blood and IronTonight the Sky BurnedToo RegularTortoroUrsula K. Le GuinVillipede PublicationsWest Kirby EventWetbackWitch HouseWorld FantasyWorldconWriter's BlockZachary Huntanother time another placeaoife's kissbarren worldsfleshworldking gob's warcrylibrary of the living deadnanoismnew skin for the old ceremonynight shade bookssam dot publishingthe ascension of deepredthe gate in the junglethe tyranny of thankgrind the cruelthe willowswebsiteWriting on the MoonThe Blog of author David Tallermanhttp://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)Blogger350125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-1120742486501851831Fri, 31 Jul 2015 19:06:00 +00002015-07-31T20:06:42.260+01:00AnimeFilm RambleFilm Ramble: Drowning in Nineties Anime, Pt. 5<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">One thing I've realised in the last couple of weeks is that this blog series might conceivably never end. &nbsp;Every time I think I've exhausted all of the nineties anime still available, I'll stumble over a new vein. &nbsp;Once you start digging, its surprising what you can turn up; the more I go on, the more it becomes possible to imagine a future where I basically never stop discovering new stuff to watch.<br /><br />On the other hand, it's even easier to imagine a future where I stop finding <i>good </i>new stuff to watch. &nbsp;But I'm steadily coming to accept that, though a great deal of nineties anime has been forgotten for perfectly sensible reasons, that's not necessarily a reason to view it without a degree of interest and fondness. &nbsp;If nothing else, it's thrilling to watch any art form develop at such a pace; asides perhaps from traditional film-making in its first decades, it's hard to think of any medium that's evolved so utterly or broadened its scope so widely in a mere handful of years. <br /><br />Anyway, enough self-justification; there's nineties anime to be watched! &nbsp;This week: <b>Patlabor</b>, <b>Casshan: Robot Hunter</b>, <b>Geobreeders </b>and <b>The Dark Myth</b>...<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fKzx6MjdulQ/VZ1vxycWm1I/AAAAAAAABhg/RFLoGElrjS0/s1600/Patlabor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fKzx6MjdulQ/VZ1vxycWm1I/AAAAAAAABhg/RFLoGElrjS0/s320/Patlabor.jpg" width="213" /></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100339/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Patlabor: The Movie</a>, 1989, dir: Mamoru Oshii<br /><br />I should confess to a bit of a cheat on this one - and not for the usual reason, either, though this is indeed another late-eighties picture that I'm lumping into the wrong decade. &nbsp;No, this time it's something far more insidious than that: I'm reviewing a movie I've seen before, and which is by one of my absolutely favourite directors,&nbsp;Mamoru Oshii of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113568/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2" target="_blank">Ghost in the Shell</a> fame. <br /><b><br /></b><b>Patlabor</b>&nbsp;would be interesting work, in fact, if for no other reason than that you can practically see a masterly talent taking form over its hundred minute running time. &nbsp;I don't know what Oshii's pre-<b>Patlabor</b> career was like, but it's difficult to imagine that anything in it was such a perfect marriage for his characteristic style and concerns as this. &nbsp;As such, <b>Patlabor </b>is on its surface a giant robot movie, but one that once you delve even a little bit deeper turns out to be something considerably more interesting. &nbsp;It spends a good deal of its running time posing as a rather sedate police procedural, before the last half hour transforms into a masterclass of an action movie conclusion, which constantly ramps its threat in imaginative, ever more exciting ways. &nbsp;It does both of those things exceptionally well, but it's perhaps the first two thirds that bear most of Oshii's stamp. &nbsp;There is, for example, a lovely, meditative sequence of the two police detectives going about their business, which does great work of visually emphasizing in light-handed fashion one of the film's core themes: that there'll always be places and people left behind by technological progress, and that the faster and more uncontrolled the progress the deeper and more permanent the damage.<br /><br />For a movie with doubts about the unchecked advance of technology, however,&nbsp;<b>Patlabor </b>had no qualms about being at the cutting edge of its field; given that it's now more than 25 years old, it stands up astonishingly well. &nbsp;Few anime directors are as infatuated with detail as Oshii, and that tendency was already fully on display here; only the colour palette and facial designs really date it at all. &nbsp;It benefits, too, from a typically marvelous score from Oshii's regular collaborator,&nbsp;Kenji Kawai. &nbsp;And, impressively for its time, it's an early demonstration of Oshii's leaning towards highly capable female protagonists. &nbsp;That epic finale, for example, neatly flips its gender cliches: while the men are holed up in the control room doing tech stuff and getting stressed, its the women out there doing the actual giant robot fighting.<br /><br />In short,&nbsp;<b>Patlabor </b>is a genuine classic, and a genuine milestone. &nbsp;It's not, perhaps, as definitive or redefining as <b>Ghost in the Shell</b> would prove to be, but nonetheless Oshii's achievement here is tough to fault.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tiDitCHJCT4/VZ1v0dNhgmI/AAAAAAAABho/jP3ibGcan74/s1600/Casshan_Robot_Hunter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tiDitCHJCT4/VZ1v0dNhgmI/AAAAAAAABho/jP3ibGcan74/s320/Casshan_Robot_Hunter.jpg" width="225" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0281699/" target="_blank">Casshan: Robot Hunter</a>, 1993, dir:&nbsp;Hiroyuki Fukushima<br /><br /><b>Casshan</b>, (or <b>Casshern</b>, depending on who you ask and when), has had a great many outings over the course of some fifty years, including a live-action film - which I remember as being entertaining, if not necessarily good - and a more recent short series with the cheery title of <b>Casshern Sins</b>. &nbsp;But the one we're looking at is, to my knowledge, the character's second incarnation, which was a four part OVA revival of the seventies original.<br /><br />Now I get the impression from my limited research that this re-imagining was intended to be rather more adult than that seventies take. &nbsp;However, if you're sharp-eyed, a look at the poster will tell you exactly what passed for adult in the minds of the producers. &nbsp;Yeah, it's that staple of nineties anime, stripping your heroine half naked for no damn reason other than the very cheapest titillation! &nbsp;And boy does it stuck out in <b>Casshan</b>, which otherwise is just about the goofiest thing you've seen. &nbsp;Seriously, that needless flash of awkwardly animated bosoms aside, <b>Casshan </b>is not very adult at all - and frankly all the better for it.<br /><br />It's hard indeed, for example, to dislike a series where the hero has for a sidekick a fire-breathing robot dog called Friender. &nbsp;The presence of Friender alone introduces a giddy, kid-making-stuff-up-on-the-fly aspect that extends all the way through <b>Casshan</b>'s most entertaining moments. &nbsp;As such, it's worst when it's concentrating on its dour plot or its flaccid romance, and in the English dub at least, whenever Casshan is talking, since Steve Bulen inflicts on our teenage protagonist a voice that makes him sound like a forty year old ham actor in an amateur production of King Lear. &nbsp;And since those elements take up quite a portion of the running time, it frequently threatens to not be too much fun; but then another absurd robot design shows up, or Casshan punches something, or Friender does anything at all, and suddenly it's entertaining again.<br /><br />Does that qualify as a recommendation? &nbsp;Probably not. &nbsp;But you could do worse for a couple of hours of silly nostalgia-watching, and there are enough copies floating about that you can pick it up second hand for next to nothing.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nJ9pH4KMZLc/Va_ccvWVLDI/AAAAAAAABjo/fxe9RfqMXOs/s1600/Geobreeders.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nJ9pH4KMZLc/Va_ccvWVLDI/AAAAAAAABjo/fxe9RfqMXOs/s320/Geobreeders.jpg" width="231" /></a></div><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0238998/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Geobreeders</a>, 1998, dir: Yûji Moriyama<br /><br />Once again I have to admit to a degree of bias, in that <b>Geobreeders </b>was the first Manga I ever read, and as such has a soft spot in my heart that made me both giddily excited to discover that this anime adaptation was available and all but unable to consider it with any kind of objectivity. &nbsp;It's also another slight cheat of my own rules for these articles, in that I've tried to focus on works that are fairly readily available, whereas <b>Geobreeders </b>is tough to find cheaply, (though it's worth pointing out that the DVD advertised as Region 1 is actually all region-compatible.)<br /><br />With that baggage out in the open, what do we have here? &nbsp;Well, <b>Geobreeders </b>follows the adventures of Kagura Total Security, an almost entirely female organisation devoted (in so much as they get paid for it) to the eradication of phantom cats, which are basically were-cats with the ability to infect and manipulate technology and some kind of secret, most likely evil, agenda. &nbsp;And if a lot of stuff gets exploded in ludicrous fashion in the meantime, Kagura are absolutely okay with that.<br /><br /><b>Geobreeders </b>the film, however, explains very little of this indeed - which could be a failing or a strength, depending on how you choose to consider it. &nbsp;It opens with the false start of some comedy credits that won't make a damn bit of sense to anyone not already familiar with the property, then throws at us an <i>in media res </i>opening sequence that makes only a little more sense, <i>then </i>dashes straight on to its first big action set-piece, still with only the most tangential attempts made to fill us in on background, characters or anything much else.<br /><br />All of this I love, and makes <b>Geobreeders </b>what it is, which is to say, hugely fun and absurdly fast-paced. &nbsp;This is true of a lot of anime, but I've never seen it be truer than here. &nbsp;<b>Geobreeders </b>really has no interest in anything that slows its forward momentum, it doesn't give half a damn about its own plot, and what's rarer, that carefree attitude is coupled with a director who actually seems genuinely in tune with his material. &nbsp;It's fun and stupid and I can't help but adore it. &nbsp;That said, a little research reveals that this first OVA is set quite far into the Manga, and I can only imagine how little sense this would make if you hadn't at least a passing knowledge of the books; too, it should be noted that there's a fair bit of gratuitous female semi-nudity, for anyone who finds that bothersome. &nbsp;Which I generally tend to, thinking about it, but I can't find it in my heart to climb on that high horse against a series where pretty much the entire cast are female, and all of them are, (whatever their comedic failings and tendency to needlessly blow things up), basically excellent at what they do.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vZdXE9rqQhY/VbH136iEcTI/AAAAAAAABj8/R-A4tl0mJ00/s1600/Dark%2BMyth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vZdXE9rqQhY/VbH136iEcTI/AAAAAAAABj8/R-A4tl0mJ00/s320/Dark%2BMyth.jpg" width="229" /></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159394/" target="_blank">The Dark Myth</a>, 1990, dir's:&nbsp;Takashi Annô, Tomomi Mochizuki<br /><br />Where do you even begin with a film like <b>The Dark Myth</b>? &nbsp;Certainly not with the plot, for there's barely anything here that justifies the term; what we have instead is a series of conversations, mostly about either history or theology, crammed into a loose narrative framework that mostly serves to switch&nbsp;up&nbsp;the location every so often. &nbsp;There are a number of characters but barely any characterisation, since no one does much besides spout exposition, (most of which is made incomprehensible by the fact that it consists of little besides names of Japanese historical figures, places and Asian deities), and there's only one, brief scene that comes close to deserving the word action. &nbsp;There's also not much in the way of dramatic tension: things that we're told will happen happen, then more things happen, then it stops.<br /><br />And here's the thing: I loved every confusing, expository, audience-defying moment. &nbsp;Frankly, had there been no plot at all I could probably still have enjoyed it, for the animation is above average and well directed, a mix of more than usually realistic character designs with some frequently lovely painted backdrops, often of Japanese scenery. &nbsp;Most importantly, there's some real imagination on display - the high-point surely a sequence in which protagonist Takeshi walks in a daze and his state is represented by whiting out everything but him, which is hard to describe but remarkably effective in practice. &nbsp;But really, there's a great deal to catch the eye here, and as much to catch the mind; even when it's not entirely clear what's going on, <b>Dark Myth</b>&nbsp;is frequently striking. &nbsp;And to top it all off, we have another score by Kenji Kawai, the closing theme of which is one of my favourite pieces of anime music in quite a while.<br /><br />None of this makes what's going on any less confusing, but it certainly does make it go down a lot easier. &nbsp;And in fairness, once you get into the rhythm of what <b>Dark Myth</b> is doing - and assuming you don't find those first few, incomprehensible minutes an insurmountable hurdle - it's easy to be on side with. &nbsp;The barrages of names, the theological conundrums, aren't terribly important so long as you manage to keep track of the broad strokes; whenever something actually significant happens, the film is quite happy to signpost it, and you sense that it isn't so much being deliberately obtuse as trying to fit a great deal in, or perhaps simply suffering in translation.<br /><br />Which is rather a crucial point - for of everything that Manga Video chose to cock up with their shockingly unambitious DVD releases, <b>Dark Myth</b> suffers worse than most. &nbsp;A few expository extras, maybe some historical notes, would have made all the difference, and the option to watch in the original Japanese - not offered here, as with all of Manga's budget releases - is surely nothing short of essential. &nbsp;For that matter, if the transfer wasn't so brutally ugly, I suspect we might be looking at a film hailed for its above average visuals instead of one utterly ignored by everyone.<br /><br />At any rate, I'm not certain where this leaves us. &nbsp;I can't possibly not recommend something so utterly interesting and ideas-laden, but there's no getting around the fact that we're looking at a limited audience indeed. &nbsp;I literally can't find one review with anything nice to say about <b>The Dark Myth</b>! &nbsp;Then again, I'd read some of those reviews before I watched it, so perhaps the trick is to go in forewarned; which means that, if you've read this far and don't think it sounds utterly terrible then just maybe you'll get as much out of it as I did.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">-o0o-</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Are these posts getting longer? &nbsp;They are, aren't they? &nbsp;I mean, fair enough, I had a lot to say about <b>Patlabor</b>, but did I really need four paragraphs on <b>Casshan: Robot Hunter</b> of all things? &nbsp;On the other hand, it would appear that this is the first time I've been at least tentatively positive about everything. &nbsp;Clearly the series is heading in the right direction; or else whatever was left of my critical faculties has finally dissolved under the weight of too much nineties anime. &nbsp;Which, come to think of it, is much more likely. &nbsp;And probably for the best! &nbsp;Because as I noted at the start, there's barely an end in sight...</div><br /><br /><br />[Other posts in this interminable series: <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.html" target="_blank">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.html" target="_blank">Part 2</a>, <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime_29.html" target="_blank">Part 3</a>, <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.html" target="_blank">Part 4</a>]</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/07/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-3048569981388400559Thu, 23 Jul 2015 19:34:00 +00002015-08-02T14:41:55.292+01:00Nine WorldsMy Nine Worlds 2015 Schedule<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">With this year's <a href="https://nineworlds.co.uk/" target="_blank">Nine Worlds</a> just around the corner - well, two whole weeks away - I thought it was about time I got my schedule out into the world. &nbsp;I'm fairly busy this time, at least in comparison to anything I've been at in the last year or so, and I'm also set for a pretty intimidating first. &nbsp;I mean, having got my head around appearing on panels, then moderating panels, and then appearing on a game show with a live audience, (okay, I didn't even slightly get my head around that), I thought I'd faced all the fears I have to face. &nbsp;But no! &nbsp;Just like uncle H.P. taught us, there will always be new existential terrors to stare down, and I'll be doing some good, hard staring at this year's Nine Worlds. &nbsp;But more on that in a moment. &nbsp;Because before the really scary stuff, we have...<br /><br /><b>- How To Break Into Comics - But seriously, how?; 13:30 PM Friday</b><br /><br />I specifically asked to be on this, because I have no idea how to break into comics and I'm hoping someone will tell me. &nbsp;There must be a way! &nbsp;I really thought I had it when I sent Stan Lee my severed ear, but no, not even a reply. &nbsp;Although I'm pretty certain he was wearing it in place of his own for his Ant-Man cameo, the goof. &nbsp;Anyway, I'm sure there'll be some great advice flying around on this one - but expect me to be the one listening to it, not giving it. <br /><br />(Please don't tell the organisers this, I think I've got them them fooled.)<br /><br /><b>- The Humanitarian Element: Superheroic Ethics - Heroism, compromise &amp; the reality of intervening under fire; 11:45 AM Sunday</b><br /><br />Whereas this I actually have a serious interest in, and will probably be saying serious things in a very serious voice. &nbsp;(You've probably never heard my serious voice.) &nbsp;I've noticed in recent months that I'm getting awfully bored of superheroes who behave like thugs, and of seeing stuff get smashed for no good reason, and of vigilantes who never actually seem to <i>help </i>anyone. &nbsp;I've got to a point where every time a house gets 'sploded or a car gets trashed I start worrying over insurance policies. &nbsp;I am, in fact, so dubious about needlessly destructive superheroes these days that I'm about to write a damn novel on the subject. &nbsp;So come, hear me rant! &nbsp;(Or else hear me get shouted down by people better informed than I!)<br /><br /><b>- Monsterclass - How to really write a short story; 13:00 PM Sunday</b><br /><b><br /></b>And here, at the end, we get to the really alarming bit. &nbsp;Yeah, that would be me teaching an hour-long workshop on how to write a short story. &nbsp;Which, okay, is at least something I can claim a limited degree of knowledge on, having knocked out over a hundred of the things and sold somewhere around seventy. &nbsp;But have I learned anything through that process? &nbsp;If I have, can I possibly convey it to other human beings? &nbsp;For that matter, are there other human beings irresponsible enough to listen to me talk at them for a whole hour? &nbsp;And if I can't even answer questions like these, what chance do I have of teaching an hour long workshop? &nbsp;Ha! &nbsp;Well we'll see, all right. &nbsp;Seriously, though, I'm determined to do a good job on this, if only because it's quite the privilege to be asked.<br /><br />--<br /><br />So there we have it: my Nine Worlds itinerary. &nbsp;I have to admit, I'm looking forward to this one; I get to talk about some interesting stuff, and as much as it's a bit frightening, I'm buzzed about the idea of having a go at running a workshop. <br /><br />Which, come to think of it, I really should be planning, instead of writing this...<br /><br /><br /></div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/07/my-nine-worlds-2015-schedule.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-4691070999885540296Wed, 15 Jul 2015 14:57:00 +00002015-07-15T15:57:00.093+01:00Edge LitEdgeLit Impressions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">This Saturday just passed was my first experience of <a href="http://www.derbyquad.co.uk/special-event/edge-lit-4" target="_blank">Edge Lit</a>, which I'd gone out of my way to make <br />it to this year having been told repeatedly by a fair number of people that - despite being just the one day - it was one of the better UK conventions. &nbsp;And lo and behold, that was entirely true, though I'm still not one hundred percent sure as to why.<br /><br />Certainly the content was the usual mix of launches, talks, readings and panels, and at least when it came to the last of those, it would be a stretch to suggest that there was anything being said that hadn't been covered elsewhere. &nbsp; The only one I made it to was pleasant enough; a polite chat amongst some excellent writers saying interesting things, albeit at a volume that wasn't quite up to the task of such a big space. &nbsp;Honestly, speaking as someone who's desperate to see the convention scene get the shake-up it's long overdue, the content side seemed to me a bit above fine - and under other circumstances, that would probably have <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/eastercon-2015.html" target="_blank">left me grumbling</a>.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4V97JRqLnxI/VaVcABVcfSI/AAAAAAAABjI/jWREMsoNu7o/s1600/EdgeLit%2B-%2BBar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4V97JRqLnxI/VaVcABVcfSI/AAAAAAAABjI/jWREMsoNu7o/s320/EdgeLit%2B-%2BBar.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me, Del and Kim Lakin-Smith, a bar.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />In the case of Edge Lit, though, it just didn't bother me a great deal. &nbsp;And despite what I said above, it occurs to me that I actually have a really good idea why that was: it's absolutely the right size for the thing that it is, and it has absolutely the perfect venue, in the shape of Derby's Quad. &nbsp;That space was just right to make everything feel friendly and intimate, where so many conventions are sprawling and anonymous and kind of intimidating. &nbsp;And that sort of consideration ran through a great deal of Edge Lit. &nbsp;Why aren't more conventions towards the centre of the country, where folks from both north and south can attend? &nbsp;In cities where you can get a cheap room for the night in a good hotel? &nbsp;And where there are plenty of places to pop out for food and drink nearby? &nbsp;The Quad was just a damn fine venue, and the scale of everything was exactly right for the event it was, and the event used the available space exceedingly well. &nbsp;With all the program items within a couple of minutes walk and a large, well-staffed bar for any quiet periods, it was downright tough to get bored.<br /><br />Now, if some of what I've said sounds like damning praise then it isn't meant to be; or rather, it maybe is, but of UK conventions in general rather than Edge Lit specifically. &nbsp;And though there was a considerable proportion of professional authors there, I can absolutely see that I wasn't the target audience; with its welcome emphasis on workshops,&nbsp;Edge Lit is&nbsp;clearly aiming primarily at up-and-coming writers, and I've no doubt that a few years ago I'd have found it to be just about the most useful and enlightening thing imaginable.<br /><br />These days, however, my requirement for a convention has a lot more to do with a nice big bar and a location that doesn't cost me a fortune to get to, and like I said, Edge Lit nailed that stuff right to the table. &nbsp;Also, as someone who's always impressed when people get the little things right, I feel I should mention that it had by far the most professionally produced program I've yet seen and the first goodie bag to contain something I actually really wanted, in the shape of a downright marvelous CD compilation put together by author <a href="http://www.johnconnollybooks.com/" target="_blank">John Connolly</a>. &nbsp;(Seriously, if you were there and haven't given it a spin yet, do right now.) &nbsp;And lastly, since I still feel like this praise has been a little on the watered-down side, let's finish by pointing out that I had a bloody good day, that I got to hang out with a whole bunch of terrific people, and that I will certainly be going back again next year.</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/07/edgelit-impressions.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-5293242340559330807Tue, 07 Jul 2015 19:37:00 +00002015-07-07T20:37:51.222+01:00Bards and Sages QuarterlyDegeneratesThe Bad NeighbourThe UpliftedWhite ThorneWunderkindNovel Update, Mid-2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">It seems like a while since I've talked about my multifarious ongoing novels here, (or indeed about anything much besides nineties anime), and so I thought that June drawing to a close was a sensible enough reason to stop and think loudly about just where everything's at. &nbsp;It's a good time for a little retrospection and forward-thinking, too, as it turns out, since some long term projects are finally drawing towards a close, whilst others are in the process of blossoming from half-formed ideas into actual, real work that I have to figure out how to begin in the near future.<br /><br />On the endings front, I literally just finished with the second draft of my first attempt at a crime novel, <b>The Bad Neighbour</b>. &nbsp;Of everything I've done, I can't think of a project where the first and second drafts were such completely different experiences. &nbsp;I wrote the first draft at - what was for me, anyway - high speed. &nbsp;I'm coming to learn that the first drafts of novels aren't my favourite part of the writing process on the best of days, but this felt like four and a half months of yanking my own teeth out, and by the end I wasn't hopeful for what I'd accomplished, only grateful it was done with. &nbsp;So that when the feedback from my beta-readers came back as almost entirely positive, I felt nothing but confused; had I somehow sent people the wrong manuscript? &nbsp;Maybe e-mailed out a copy of someone else's book? &nbsp;But as it turned out, no. &nbsp;Going back to&nbsp;<b>Bad Neighbour</b>, I was shocked by how well it held together. &nbsp;I still am, really. &nbsp;The&nbsp;second draft work felt like what I'd normally expect of a third draft, lots of tidying and polishing and not much in the way of surgery, and I liked what I ended up with. &nbsp;It's a vicious, pulpy little beast, not even slightly like anything I've attempted, but I'm not sure if it isn't the best novel I've written.<br /><br />Mind, maybe I shouldn't say that, because I'm about to embark on the final draft of <b>Degenerates </b>- the novel once called <b>War For Funland</b>, though it's changed immeasurably since those days - and I'd hate to hurt its feelings. &nbsp;Overhauling relatively old work into something I can be happy with has been a hell of a thing, and not only has it involved adding a new viewpoint character, greatly enlarging the role of others whilst removing a few more, excising huge chunks and adding others and an overall staggering amount of editing, but in the last draft I completely rejigged the basic structure and changed the entire damn book from past to present tense. &nbsp;Which is not a thing you want to do to a one hundred and thirty thousand word novel, I tell you. &nbsp;But, you know, worth it - I think. &nbsp;I mean, I've just read over the last draft and felt pretty good about it. &nbsp;If I feel the same in three months' time then that's novel number five in the bag.<br /><br />As for number seven - that being my medieval noir fantasy <b>White Thorne</b> - it's at almost exactly its midway point. &nbsp;And so far, if it's taught me one thing, it's that writing historical fiction is <i>really damn hard</i>. &nbsp;I mean, writing about the First World War was no easy thing, but at least I felt like I had some fundamental things in common with the folks I was trying to make real; technologically, psychologically, sociologically, we had enough shared ground that it seemed like I could find a way into their heads. &nbsp;But the Middle Ages? &nbsp;Those people were basically aliens. &nbsp;Months of research have taught me that they didn't live like us, they didn't think like us, and I'm at a point now where if someone tried to convince me that they all had four arms apiece I might believe it. &nbsp;So -&nbsp;<b>White Thorne </b>is not going smoothly. &nbsp;However I just got through explaining how an agonising first draft can yield solid results, and damn but I'm clinging to that belief, while I shovel on with what is absolutely, definitely the most difficult thing I've yet tried. &nbsp;All I'm saying is, this book better turn out great, because if not then I'm going to punch it in the mouth.<br /><br />Last up, and next on the horizon, there's the project currently going under the tentative title of <b>The Uplifted</b>. &nbsp;It's been bouncing around my brain for a long while now, ever since I wrote a short story called&nbsp;<b>Wunderkind</b>, which appeared to minimal attention in a fanzine called <i>Bards and Sages Quarterly</i>. &nbsp;The core idea - of superheroes in a world ravaged by an apocalypse that they, with their unfamiliar and unchecked powers, inadvertently brought about - somewhere along the line combined with the classic story-line of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Harvest" target="_blank">Red Harvest</a> - which if you haven't read it, you've certainly come across in one of its guises, as <i>A Fist Full of Dollars</i> or <i>Yojimbo </i>or the original <i>Django </i>or <i>Last Man Standing</i> - and then suddenly I had this thing that I kept referring to as my Post-Apocalyptic Red Harvest Superhero Novel, to the confusion and consternation of everyone. &nbsp;But hey, if you're a writer and you're not causing confusion and consternation then you're probably not doing your job properly. &nbsp;Or so I'm telling myself, as I try to put together an outline of its increasingly tangled plot, with the (perhaps slightly optimistic) view of starting work before the end of this month.<br /><br />Is that everything? &nbsp;Well, no, not quite; but it's enough to going on with, and I'm sure I'll be getting to the other stuff soon enough. &nbsp;Now back to the all-but-impossible task of trying to invent superpowers no one's thought of before...<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/07/novel-update-mid-2015.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-7834505259632328024Sun, 28 Jun 2015 16:03:00 +00002015-07-28T14:48:47.139+01:00Film RambleFilm Ramble: Drowning in Nineties Anime, Pt. 4<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Are we really up to part 4? &nbsp;That's a whole lot of nineties anime watched! &nbsp;And truth be told, exhaustion is beginning to set in just a little, as it becomes increasingly apparent that a lot of nineties anime was far from being entirely original, and even more of it was&nbsp;far&nbsp;from&nbsp;being being terribly good.<br /><br />Does that mean I'm close to giving up? &nbsp;Oh hell no! &nbsp;Where there's nineties anime to be found, there I shall be, making snarky comments whilst desperately trying to remain optimistic that there are still a few hidden gems out there waiting to be unearthed. &nbsp;And this week sees a movie I'd never remotely heard of get damn close to classic status, so there's certainly still hope yet.<br /><br />Here, then, for your delectation, we have <b>X</b>, <b>Spriggan</b>, <b>New Gall Force</b> and&nbsp;<b>Zeoraima</b>...<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-d0X6tjEHzck/VXrZWu4IZJI/AAAAAAAABgk/kGyMEWHxMiE/s1600/X-1999-movie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-d0X6tjEHzck/VXrZWu4IZJI/AAAAAAAABgk/kGyMEWHxMiE/s320/X-1999-movie.jpg" width="229" /></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0184041/" target="_blank">X</a>, 1996, dir: Rintaro<br /><br />It's difficult to know what to say about <b>X</b>. &nbsp;It's certainly a cut above much of what I've been watching lately, and - if you can put aside the fact that the only edition apparently available is a typically half-arsed transfer from Manga Video, that&nbsp;looks distinctly washed out and for some reason decides to sit the image in the centre three quarters of the screen - then it's a frequently lovely-looking bit of work, full to brimming with striking images. &nbsp;Mind you, that's about what you'd expect from director Rintaro, whose next film would be the more-or-less classic adaptation of Osama Tesuka's <b>Metropolis</b>. &nbsp;<b>X </b>is also based on a book by famous Manga house Clamp, who seemed to be everywhere at this point in time, and their input is great if you like huge eyes and pointy chins. &nbsp;But even if you find the Clamp look rather horrible - I do - it at least guarantees a level of imagination and consistency in the character designs. &nbsp;(Also gloriously well-animated hair. &nbsp;What was it with Clamp and hair?)<br /><br />So. &nbsp;It looks nice and it's well directed - though not so much so as you'd expect from the man who would imminently make <b>Metropolis</b>, and there's a definite sense, corroborated by the interview among the special features, that Rintaro wasn't one hundred percent happy with the project. &nbsp;Still, a half-hearted Rintaro is still a well above average director, and there's no denying that <b>X </b>has character and visual imagination to spare. &nbsp;By all the usual yardsticks, in fact, it's undeniably good work.<br /><br />Only, it's no fun. &nbsp;No, that's not even the half of it ... <b>X </b>is a truly miserable watch. &nbsp;I'd go so far as to use the word nihilistic, and not even in an interesting way. &nbsp;<b>X </b>basically presents to us a load of people who we're told in advance are going to die, and then we watch them die, with nary a hint of dramatic tension anywhere. &nbsp;None of them have been built up into anything you could honestly describe as characters and so there's not much reason to care, but since that's all that's going on and none of this death and carnage does much to further the plot - really the death and carnage <i>is </i>the plot - it all gets numbing very quickly. &nbsp;It's maddening really, because there's enough going on in <b>X </b>that I'd have liked to have enjoyed it; as it is, I found it just actively soul-sucking.<br /><br /><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CSFtIsfcwj0/VXrZXaBaotI/AAAAAAAABgw/w93m9SIQ4Og/s320/Spriggan.jpg" width="231" /></span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164917/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Spriggan</a>, 1998, dir:&nbsp;Hirotsugu Kawasaki<br /><br />More than any animated film I've seen, <b>Spriggan </b>gives the impression of having had an infinite budget to draw on. &nbsp;Its animation is lavish to the point of ridiculousness; scenes that could be simple and straightforward without much loss of effect end up being marvelously sophisticated showcases of the animator's art. &nbsp;I'm not, mind you, moaning about any of this - it's dazzling, frankly - but it does puzzle me a little. &nbsp;You would think, if nothing else, that a film with this sort of obvious budget would be a little better known. &nbsp;And, what's stranger, I'm not entirely certain that <b>Spriggan </b>is a better film for it.<br /><br />Or ... no, of course it is. &nbsp;But that animation is such a distinctive flavour that it makes it awfully hard to concentrate on anything else, and the fact that it's by far the movie's strongest element doesn't help that. &nbsp;To put it another way, it would be great if the same over-attention had gone into the plot and script. &nbsp;Not that they're bad, by any means, just that they would need to be astonishing to keep pace, and they're not that. &nbsp;Like a great deal of feature-length Manga adaptations, <b>Spriggan </b>simply doesn't manage to successfully cram in everything it deems worthy of inclusion, or show much evidence of picking and choosing, and what we end up with is a movie that begins aping a spy thriller, shifts into <b>Indiana Jones</b> territory with an added dose of nineties action movie, and then drifts abruptly into bizarrely theological science-fiction with a subplot about child soldiers that it doesn't seem even faintly interested in reconciling with those other elements. &nbsp;All of which is &nbsp;par for the course with anime and not really a criticism, but there's no pretending that this somewhat unfocused tale is up to the wondrous, dizzying standards of that animation.<br /><br />Still, when you're criticizing a film because it's plot is too laden with zany ideas to keep up with its exquisite animation, it's hard to pretend that that's anything but a recommendation. &nbsp;<b>Spriggan </b>is pretty great, all told, and the only thing it fails to be is wholly satisfying in retrospect; while it's actually playing it front of you, it's thrilling stuff.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_QNdEWY4azE/VXrZWeD-_tI/AAAAAAAABgg/R99Ys3X9qP8/s1600/Gall%2BForce%2BEarth%2BChapter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_QNdEWY4azE/VXrZWeD-_tI/AAAAAAAABgg/R99Ys3X9qP8/s320/Gall%2BForce%2BEarth%2BChapter.jpg" width="227" /></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0158629/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2" target="_blank">New Gall Force</a>, 1989, dir:&nbsp;Katsuhito Akiyama<br /><br />First up, good luck finding <b>New Gall Force</b> on IMDB or anywhere else; what happened here is that Manga Video took the middle chunk of an OAV series, released it out of context and retitled it, and as such, what we actually have here is <b>Gall Force: Earth Chapter</b>,&nbsp;a title that gives a much clearer sense that this is in no way a stand-alone story.<br /><br />Only, it sort of is. &nbsp;I put that fact down more to luck than judgement on Manga's part, and certainly there are elements that don't make a damn bit of sense ... though even then, as is often the way with these things, you don't really appreciate how much sense they're not making until you discover that there's a whole load of prologue you're missing.<br /><br />At any rate, that grumble aside, I enjoyed <b>Gall Force: Earth Chapter</b> rather a lot. &nbsp;I'd go so far as to say that it's the best of the Manga Collection series that I've yet seen, though given the levels of quality that statement involves, it's a bit like picking out a favourite infectious disease. &nbsp;At any rate, I didn't enjoy it half so much as <b>Landlock</b>, but we've already established that my fondness for that movie has no basis in anything much, and objectively I'm ready to admit that <b>Gall Force</b> is better.<br /><br />To that I'd add that if James Cameron had, instead of making <b>Terminator 2</b>, decided to knock out a low-budget anime series that vigorously cannibalised all of his earlier work, then it would have looked a lot like this. &nbsp;And that, it turns out, is a good thing: ripping off your themes, characters, designs, tough female protagonists and every other damn thing from a skilled director at the height of their powers, who in turn had ripped off most of those things from your chosen genre in the first place, is actually an eminently sensible thing for a late eighties anime to do. <br /><br />Though it doesn't quite explain why one of the crack military team is a small child in a crash helmet who doesn't appear to have the faintest clue that there's a war going on. &nbsp;Maybe Newt was really badly dubbed in Japan or something?<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GJbgePXswV8/VYwWsD-K0QI/AAAAAAAABhM/Biga6GPzg6M/s1600/Zeorymer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GJbgePXswV8/VYwWsD-K0QI/AAAAAAAABhM/Biga6GPzg6M/s320/Zeorymer.jpg" width="232" /></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0158772/" target="_blank">Zeoraima - Project Hades / Project Hades 2</a>, 1988, dir: Toshihiro Hirano<br /><br />Oh look, and already we have another OVA that Manga video decided to arbitrarily rename for its DVD release! &nbsp;Those guys sure must have had a lot of time of their hands; that or they wanted to give the impression that one four part OVA was in fact two feature length films, which is exactly the sort of deliberately misleading nonsense they seem to have delighted in in those days. &nbsp;In this instance it's particularly absurd because there's no possible way you could mistake the two halves for feature films, not even if you were squinting and had a very loose sense of what beginnings, middles and endings entailed.<br /><br />Anyway, <b>Zeoraima </b>starts off from a hackneyed position indeed: teenage male hero finds himself recruited to pilot giant robot that responds to no one but him against a load of other mechs, piloted by a bunch of evvvvvvil folks who generally insist on attacking him one at a time, because otherwise it would be a short story indeed. &nbsp;However it does quickly go off on a far more interesting - though, it has to be said, entirely bonkers - tangent, and for that it surely deserves credit. &nbsp;It's actually quite a clever story by the end, though it's easy to imagine a great many ways in which that story could have been better told than it is here. &nbsp;If nothing else, giant robot battles where the giant robots did something other than stand taking it in turns to shoot at each would have been a tremendously good start.<br /><br />Added to that is the fact that <b>Zeoraima </b>is just subversive and angsty enough to be faintly reminiscent of <b>Neon Genesis Evangelion</b>, the series that a mere seven years later would irreparably explode this sort of thing for all time. &nbsp;As such, the comparison does <b>Zeoraima </b>no favours at all, except in so much as to say that it has a little bit more psychological complexity to it than many of these things. &nbsp;At any rate, it's a great insight into just what Hideaki Anno was deconstructing so ferociously with <b>Evangelion</b>, and surely that counts for something. &nbsp;Whether it counts as a recommendation ... well, no it doesn't. &nbsp;Still, <b>Zeoraima </b>gets a narrow pass for keeping me amused - and frequently baffled! - through the course of its running time.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">-oOo-</div><br />So not a particularly great batch this time round, all told, with <b>Spriggan </b>the only thing I'd flat-out recommend. &nbsp;(And I really would, it's a &nbsp;deal of fun and easy to find cheap second hand.) &nbsp;<b>New Gall Force</b> gets a hesitant thumbs up if you're basically open to this whole late eighties and nineties anime thing; I can honestly say that I enjoyed every minute of watching it, even if it wasn't necessarily for very sensible reasons. &nbsp;At any rate, I now feel that more sci-fi action movies would benefit from the addition of small, oblivious children in crash helmets. <br /><br />Next time around: at least one actual, undeniable, stone-cold anime classic. &nbsp;You've been warned!<br /><br /><br />[Other posts in this series: <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.html" target="_blank">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.html" target="_blank">Part 2</a>, <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime_29.html" target="_blank">Part 3</a>]</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/06/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-3032996407489596208Tue, 23 Jun 2015 19:50:00 +00002015-06-23T20:50:36.902+01:00Writing RambleOld Dog, New Ticks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I was reading an article recently which suggested that it was a mistake to imagine you were ever too late on in life to master a new skill, or that having mastered one you were shut out from learning others. &nbsp;The author's logic was that if it takes, say, eleven years to get really damn good at something then that's theoretically eight things you can get really damn good at in the average lifespan.<br /><br />Given that most of us spend the first of those age-blocks grasping the basics of being a functional human being and the second trying to gain control of our rampaging hormones, and taking into account that you're unlikely to become, say, a world-class ballerina in your seventies, I'd have to dispute both their logic and their maths. &nbsp;There are also some pretty obvious cultural assumptions in thinking that the average person is likely to live for eighty-eight years! &nbsp;On the other hand, eleven years seems a bit on the pessimistic side; there are surely things you can become astonishing at in less time than that. &nbsp;So by way of compromise, let's say that if you're fortunate enough to be long-lived, you should have ample time to train up kick-ass skills in at least five disciplines. &nbsp;That's still pretty cool right there. &nbsp;I mean, that's a good way of looking at life, isn't it? &nbsp;At my current age of thirty-<i>mumble-mumble</i>-something, that leaves me a whole lot of learning to do yet. &nbsp;Compared with the perspective that society generally encourages - you get tolerably good at one thing and then do it until you die or it becomes redundant - this feels a whole lot healthier.<br /><br />But that's not really what I wanted to talk about, though obviously it is a bit. &nbsp;It certainly ties into the subject I wanted to touch on, which is that if you intend to be a writer in this day and age, you have to expect to get competent at an awful lot of things that have only the most tenuous connection with writing. &nbsp; You may well find yourself speaking in public, or doing other things that are outside of your comfort zone. &nbsp;The necessities of research may turn you into an amateur historian, criminologist, astrophysicist or insect wrangler. &nbsp;Unless you have the absolutely best agent and publisher in the world, you're looking at developing skill-sets like editing, web design, blogging, accountancy and publicity. &nbsp;And if you're going the self-publishing route then feel free to add cover design, marketing and a whole host of other things to that list.<br /><br />This can appear horribly intimidating and unfair, and it's easy to look at those people who only have the one thing to do - like, um,&nbsp;nail technicians&nbsp;and&nbsp;professional shot putters - and feel deeply envious. &nbsp;Turn that on its head, though, and aren't we writers an hellaciously lucky bunch of folks? &nbsp;Not only do we get to do something fundamentally awesome and creative, we inevitably acquire a whole host of new abilities in the process. &nbsp;The more you go on and the deeper you get into those eleven years you've set aside in which to become a world-class author, the more you discover that you've inadvertently picked up a raft of skills that you never expected to have, some of which require every bit as much imagination and inventiveness as writing itself.<br /><br />And here we are towards the end of a particularly rambling post, and I still haven't even touched on what first made me want to write it, which is that over the last month or two I've been learning to letter comic book pages, and just last week I finished my first attempt. &nbsp;It wasn't something I ever anticipated needing to do, and there was a steep, steep learning curve - just getting my head around a professional art package took some serious doing - but it was also a little bit thrilling, and I'm proud of what I've accomplished. &nbsp;I won't pretend I've come close to mastering it, and maybe it will take me another eleven years to do that, but I'm hopeful that I can do it well enough to not completely embarrass myself. &nbsp;Whether I'm right ... well, if everything goes to plan, that will be for others to judge when the time comes!</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/06/old-dog-new-ticks.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-1227980336975791317Sun, 07 Jun 2015 17:16:00 +00002015-06-07T18:16:28.442+01:00Writing RambleWriting Ramble: How I Write Novels Now, Part 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">So at the end of <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/writing-ramble-how-i-write-novels-now.html" target="_blank">part 1</a> I'd got to the point of being about to start some actual writing, which depending on your perspective will probably seem either very early on or quite late, but in my case is about a third of the way through the novel-crafting process.&nbsp; As I explained last time, by this juncture I'll likely have done at least some preliminary research, I'll have a detailed chapter plan based on my own synopsis and feedback from as many helpful friends as I can muster, and it will probably be in a spreadsheet because I have an obsession with spreadsheets that's all shades of unhealthy.&nbsp; Seriously, if you ever ask me to my face I'll explain how it's actually the clearest way to represent all that information, how it's great for keeping track of word counts as I go and, oh, a whole host of excuses.&nbsp; But the truth is, I have a problem and I know it.&nbsp; I mean, right now a part of my brain is thinking about how much better this blog post would look in a spreadsheet.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0j00f3UOP94/VW2-Iv_f3nI/AAAAAAAABfY/PyzV3Zupb3M/s1600/Writing_Japanese.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0j00f3UOP94/VW2-Iv_f3nI/AAAAAAAABfY/PyzV3Zupb3M/s320/Writing_Japanese.jpg" width="250" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is not how I write novels.</td></tr></tbody></table>(It really would.)<br /><br />Um.&nbsp; Right.&nbsp; I was talking about novels not spreadsheets, which are two entirely different things, more's the pity. &nbsp;Now I don't want to discuss the actual writing part here - and yes, that post title was perhaps ill-chosen, thinking back. &nbsp;Suffice to say that I'll have a fairly good idea from my chapter plan of how long my planned book is going to be, and based on that I'll have allocated a set amount of time, say two hours a day for five months, that should get me through.&nbsp; If that sounds a bit formal, it at least makes long-term planning a heck of a lot easier, and perhaps makes the creative process less stressful too; there's a lot to be said for knowing that if you consistently knock out a thousand words a day then in five months time you'll have a finished novel that looks something like the one you've intended.&nbsp; Things will inevitably go wrong along the way, dates will get juggled and there'll be days when it all seems doomed, but so long as I get my words down I know I'll make it across the finish line.<br /><br />Therefore, x number of months later I'll have a finished first draft. &nbsp;It would be nice to forget about it for a while at this point - taking a break from any project once you've completed a draft is absolutely vital - but before I do that, I make sure to get it sent off to whatever wonderful folks have agreed to act as advance readers, and knock up a couple of print-on-demand copies for anyone, including me, who prefers to read the old-school way. &nbsp;(Just how and why I find this useful is something I've <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/how-to-make-lulu-work-for-you.html" target="_blank">discussed here in the past</a>.)<br /><br />A couple of months later, at the very least, I'll come back to that print copy, and over the course of about a month I'll work through it with my reader head on. &nbsp;This serves at least three purposes; it re-familiarizes me with the book, gives me a chance to try and pick out some of the flaws I was blind to while I was putting it together, and last up allows me - hopefully! - to spot any typos. &nbsp;(This, by the way, is the main reason why I prefer to work off a print copy; I find I skim over mistakes too easily on a screen.) &nbsp;In that same month, I'll also hopefully be getting feedback from any advance readers and taking the opportunity to talk through any problems they've identified.<br /><br />All of this feedback, my own and other peoples', will go into the second draft. &nbsp;The aim this time through is to fix any plot issues, to polish, generally to cut - I usually aim to trim about ten percent - and generally to reach the point of having something that, while it will still contain mistakes and clumsy sentences and the odd bit of crap writing, looks basically like a finished work. &nbsp;And around the same time, I'll be trying to wrestle my preliminary synopsis and chapter plan into a formal synopsis that's suitable for any publishers, editors and / or agents to read, this having the added advantage that it gets me thinking about the plot from an overhead perspective, yet another thing that can potentially highlight flaws. <br /><br />Once that's all done - it generally takes two to three months - I'll let the manuscript sit again, for at least a month and more if I can afford to. &nbsp;Then I'll go back for the final round. &nbsp;The goal here, needless to say, is to produce a book that's as finished as I can make it. &nbsp;This last draft is the quickest, and depending on how well the previous one went, might be very quick indeed. &nbsp;Certainly if it takes more than a couple of months then something's gone badly wrong.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1VgVbGaydp8/VW2-IkqCLnI/AAAAAAAABfc/B4Ld2RuuphQ/s1600/writing_robot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="197" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1VgVbGaydp8/VW2-IkqCLnI/AAAAAAAABfc/B4Ld2RuuphQ/s320/writing_robot.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is how I write novels.</td></tr></tbody></table>I suppose that the obvious question at this point is, how useful would this approach to be to another writer? &nbsp;To which the answer is, of course, that I've no idea. &nbsp;It's certainly never been intended to be a catch-all solution, and I'm absolutely not presenting it as such here; like I said right at the beginning, I just happen to find these things interesting enough to think they're worth discussing. &nbsp;I know, for example, that some writers only ever produce the one draft, and some write many more than I do. &nbsp;That said, there are elements here that I'd have no hesitation about recommending. &nbsp;If you're enough of a planner to go with an initial synopsis then getting feedback at that stage is a huge help; it's intimidating to let other people that close to your raw ideas, but it's worth it. &nbsp;Reading through the previous draft in its entirety before you start the next one is invaluable, and as much as the environmentalist in me hates to say it, working off a dead tree copy reveals more typos that reading from a screen. &nbsp;And preparing a formal synopsis while you're redrafting is actually much easier than trying to do it afterwards, counterintuitive as it might sound.<br /><br />So what do you think, fellow novelist folks? &nbsp;How different is your own approach to mine? &nbsp;Am I making work for myself? &nbsp;Or cutting corners? &nbsp;Is there anything you think you might adopt, or anything you'd recommend that I'm not doing?</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/06/writing-ramble-how-i-write-novels-now.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-7889835228569073066Fri, 29 May 2015 19:25:00 +00002015-07-28T14:47:17.127+01:00Film RambleFilm Ramble: Drowning in Nineties Anime, Pt. 3<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">As we enter part 3 of this interminable series (it's perfectly possible that I'll keep going for as long as I can keep finding nineties anime, and there's still a fair bit on the to-watch shelf), the lows actually seem to be getting lower; but that's okay, because the highs are getting correspondingly higher, to the point where I'm stumbled across a couple of things I'd never even remotely heard of before all this began and which are genuinely great.&nbsp; I mean, really, objectively great; not like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0316156/" target="_blank">Landlock</a> great, and definitely not like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421480/" target="_blank">Virus Buster Serge</a> great.&nbsp; [Checks previous article to confirm he didn't really try and convince anyone <b>Virus Buster Serge</b> was any kind of good.&nbsp; Breathes sigh of relief.] <br /><br />Okay, onwards and upwards!&nbsp; This week: <b>Vampire Hunter D</b>, <b>Dangaoih</b>, <b>Orguss 02</b> and <b>Roujin Z</b>...<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kG4V8KELzLg/VWIWo9-JOPI/AAAAAAAABec/1cssW-z3itw/s1600/Vampire%2BHunter%2BD.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kG4V8KELzLg/VWIWo9-JOPI/AAAAAAAABec/1cssW-z3itw/s320/Vampire%2BHunter%2BD.jpg" width="191" /></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090248/" target="_blank">Vampire Hunter D</a>, 1985, dir: Toyoo Ashida<br /><br />All right, I should probably stop claiming that these articles are about nineties anime.&nbsp; <b>Vampire Hunter D</b> hails from all the way back in 1985, and if it has one absolutely terminal problem, it's that: low-budget animated pictures from thirty years ago do not look great, or even much more than adequate today.&nbsp; (To put that time period in perspective, Disney released <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088814/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">The Black Cauldron</a> in the same year, with <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097757/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">The Little Mermaid</a>, the beginning of the Disney Renaissance and what we tend to think of as modern animation still a good four years away.)<br /><br />Anyway, I'm assuming here that <b>Vampire Hunter D</b> was low-budget, but since my knowledge of eighties anime is even more scant than my knowledge of nineties anime, perhaps it was absolutely cutting edge at the time.&nbsp; It hardly matters now, since it still looks horrible: dark colours, dull backgrounds - or frequently no backgrounds at all - and stilted animation.&nbsp; What salvages it, somewhat, is the design work, the inherent appeal of which often manages to bypass the actual production, and the sheer goddamn weirdness of so much of what it's representing.&nbsp; <b>Vampire Hunter D</b> takes place in a distant future that mixes high technology and Gothic grotesqueness, and there are points where it plays that concept for all it's worth; in those moments, the movie<b> </b>almost seems recommendable.<br /><br />There is, however, one flaw with that logic, and that's the fact that sequel / follow-up <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216651/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust</a> would be released fifteen years later.&nbsp; <i>Bloodlust </i>contains everything that's good in <b>Vampire Hunter D</b>, has few to none of its failings, and is a tremendously good bit of gory action sci-fi that I'd recommend without hesitation.&nbsp; If <b>Bloodlust </b>didn't exist, <b>Vampire Hunter D</b> might skirt by on its limited charms; since it does, it's hard to think of any reason to go back.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-W9cGmvpH-RM/VWIZN7ahoxI/AAAAAAAABfA/01_NsYjO_wo/s1600/Dangaioh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-W9cGmvpH-RM/VWIZN7ahoxI/AAAAAAAABfA/01_NsYjO_wo/s320/Dangaioh.jpg" width="225" /></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0220381/" target="_blank">Dangaoih</a>, 1987, dir: Toshihiro Hirano<br /><br />Not so long ago I was debating the virtues of the company Manga Video with a friend.&nbsp; He had a soft spot for them on the grounds that when he was getting into anime into the late eighties and early nineties they were about the only ones importing it; I countered that if it hadn't been them it would surely have been someone else, and that whoever that someone might have been, they couldn't possibly have done a crappier job of it.<br /><br />I wish I'd seen <b>Dangaoih </b>at that point.&nbsp; If I had, I'd have sat him through it and won the discussion hands down.<br /><br /><b>Dangaoih </b>surely has to be - at least, I <i>hope </i>it has to be - the single shonkiest thing Manga ever stooped to.&nbsp; Not so much the animation itself, which is at least watchable, and bursts into life during its action sequences.&nbsp; No, the reason the western release of <b>Dangaoih </b>simply has no reason to exist is that Manga saw fit to release only parts two and three of a three part OVA, with the first episode crammed into a brief prologue that roughly conveys the effect of having a third of a movie conveyed to you by a hyperactive, imaginative, but not especially bright child.&nbsp; This, needless to say, does it no favours at all.<br /><br />But as if that weren't enough, <b>Dangaoih </b>also suffers from, hands down, the worst dub I've yet to encounter.&nbsp; I mean, it's bad in all the usual ways a dub can be bad, but then on top of that there's the copious swearing, presumably added to earn a 15 certificate for a film that wouldn't otherwise have come close to warranting it.&nbsp; It's jarring, not so much because it's witless and gratuitous - though it's absolutely both - but because it's clearly not what the characters are saying.&nbsp; It doesn't synch up, or make much sense in context, or fit even slightly with the general tone.&nbsp; Nor does it stretch to the levels of being comically bad, which you'd think should have been a given with material like this.<br /><br />To be honest, though, as despicable a treatment as Manga gave <b>Dangaoih</b>, it could have been dubbed by the finest vocal cast ever assembled and presented in the most polished release imaginable, and it would still be a merely functional bit of nonsense.&nbsp; As such, it becomes the first film in this blog post series that I'm going to wholeheartedly not recommend.&nbsp; If you see <b>Dangaoih </b>for pennies in a budget bin, don't be tempted by that shiny giant robot or those - um - sexy, bodysuit-clad ladies!&nbsp; Just walk on by! <br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aCcc_6SVQJ4/VWIWq-EGB-I/AAAAAAAABek/Olu6Uk7nwHE/s1600/Orguss%2B02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aCcc_6SVQJ4/VWIWq-EGB-I/AAAAAAAABek/Olu6Uk7nwHE/s320/Orguss%2B02.jpg" width="216" /></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0152666/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Orguss 02</a>, 1993, dir's: Fumihiko Takayama, Takahiro Okao, Hiroshi Tamada<br /><br />I said in part one that a principal aim of this binge-watch was the hope, partly inspired I think by rediscovering the magnificent <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093207/" target="_blank">Wings of Honneamise</a>, of finding some little-known classics that had previously passed me by.&nbsp; There have been a couple of near misses, but it was beginning to seem a hopeless dream until I came across <b>Orguss 02</b>. <br /><br />I'm genuinely surprised that <b>Orguss 02</b> isn't better known, because it's very good indeed, and very reminiscent of work from the same era that's now unanimously acknowledged as classic.&nbsp; With its tale of an early industrial society drifting towards war, it reminded me principally of <b>Honneamise</b> itself,&nbsp; but also of Miyazaki's early feature-length efforts <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087544/" target="_blank">Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092067/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_18" target="_blank">Laputa</a>; enough so that it's easy to imagine all three as conspicuous influences.&nbsp; Yet it doesn't feel derivative, and though there are familiar elements - giant mecha, teen heroes, robots - <b>Orguss 02</b> doesn't seem greatly concerned with any of them.&nbsp; Certainly, I'm struggling to think of any other anime that calls itself after a mech that then fails to appear for fully half the series and is only mentioned by name for the first time within minutes of the end. <br /><br />In short, <b>Orguss 02</b>'s main interests clearly lie elsewhere.&nbsp; It's mostly about war, a subject it treats with a lack of sympathy that more than warrants that Miyazaki comparison.&nbsp; It's also hugely cynical about politics; it presents the leaders of its two rival nations with such outright contempt that in places it plays like <b>Games of Thrones</b>-lite - and just like <b>Games of Thrones</b>, their conniving is thoroughly compelling and ends badly for all involved, up to and including any innocents caught in the vicinity.&nbsp; Yet, though it views human nature bluntly, it's not a depressing show; there's a lightness of touch here that much anime that deals in dark and serious themes often lacks.&nbsp; Perhaps the drift, late on, into wacky high-concept sci-fi will disgruntle some - if there's one thing that isn't in <b>Orguss 02</b>'s favour, it's that it's a semi-sequel to an earlier show that it largely forgets about until the end - but it doesn't come at the expense of the good work done before, and like every element on display here, it works just fine on its own merits.&nbsp; In short, if you're interested in somewhat older anime and have exhausted the usual candidates, I can't recommend this enough.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aKTapQNEk3w/VWIW04pIYWI/AAAAAAAABes/KTZ88H6S0Xo/s1600/Roujin%2BZ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aKTapQNEk3w/VWIW04pIYWI/AAAAAAAABes/KTZ88H6S0Xo/s320/Roujin%2BZ.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102812/" target="_blank">Roujin Z</a>, 1991, dir: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0457541/?ref_=ttfc_fc_dr1" target="_blank">Hiroyuki Kitakubo</a><br /><br />Having had my expectations lowered by a month of noticeably failing to dig up any lost classics, it was clearly too much to expect that I'd stumble upon not one but two.&nbsp; Yet here we are, and here <i>Roujin Z</i> is, and I'm a happy bunny indeed.<br /><br />In this case, the fact that the film appears to be barely known is that bit odder given the extraordinary array of talent behind the scenes. Its director, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0457541/?ref_=ttfc_fc_dr1" target="_blank">Hiroyuki Kitakubo</a>, was key animator on <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094625/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Akira</a>, and that unassailable masterpiece also provided <b>Roujin Z</b> with its scriptwriter, in the shape of the legendary <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0960028/?ref_=tt_ov_dr" target="_blank">Katsuhiro Ôtomo</a>; but as if having the main talent behind <b>Akira </b>wasn't enough, we also get early work for one of the ten - maybe five? - greatest anime directors of all time, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0464804/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cr14" target="_blank">Satoshi Kon</a>, who acts as art designer here.<br /><br />On top of all that combined brilliance, <b>Roujin Z</b> has an irresistible premise: an elderly man is assigned to a revolutionary mechanical hospital bed that's supposed to fulfill all of his requirements, social, physical and mental.&nbsp; But a combination of technical error, its occupant's stubbornness, the interference of the old man's former nurse and the fact that the bed is built on a foundation of experimental military technology (because of course it is!) leads to the bed gaining a life and agenda of its own, one that only grows more outlandish when it becomes possessed by its patient's dead wife.<br /><br />If that also sounds like a distinctly anime-like set up, it's worth pointing out that <b>Roujin Z</b>'s wider social message is very much overlaid by an affectionate assault on the tropes of its medium; that the bed, codenamed Project Z, ends up battling its military equivalent (codenamed Alpha, of course) should come as no surprise.&nbsp; Yet if <b>Roujin Z</b> has a failing, it's this; the earlier satire of a culture that wants nothing to do with its aging population and the increasingly over the top parody of the second half don't exactly mesh.&nbsp; Still, both are great fun, both contain some really exciting moments of animation - there's a glorious physicality to the action that you only seem to get in hand-drawn animation, and then only rarely - and if the end result falls somewhat short of the best work by all involved, it's still quite clearly a passion project made with vast enthusiasm by tremendously talented people.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">-oOo-</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So, a fifty-fifty success rate, or maybe even fifty-five percent, since <b>Vampire Hunter D</b> was just about worth watching.&nbsp; And while I'll never get the minutes of my life that I wasted on <b>Dangaoih </b>back, at least it's set the bar so low that it's hard to see anything else limboing under it.&nbsp; Can the next batch possibly beat this one?&nbsp; Almost certainly not, but it won't stop me hoping!<br /><br /><br />[Other posts in this series: <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.html" target="_blank">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.html" target="_blank">Part 2</a>, <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.html" target="_blank">Part 4</a>] </div></div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/05/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime_29.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-8839384968290038945Fri, 22 May 2015 17:50:00 +00002015-05-22T18:50:02.617+01:00Writing RambleWriting Ramble: How I Write Novels Now, Part 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: right;"></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UUNGgypXc6E/VV4m84LhCfI/AAAAAAAABdg/18BM_g4Bs2Q/s1600/Writing_Quill.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="258" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UUNGgypXc6E/VV4m84LhCfI/AAAAAAAABdg/18BM_g4Bs2Q/s320/Writing_Quill.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is not how I write novels.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It's an obvious point that no two people write novels the same way, and an even more obvious one that there's no right way to go about it - though it's <span style="font-family: inherit;">surely </span>the case that there are <span style="font-family: inherit;">all manner</span> of wrong ways<span style="font-family: inherit;">!</span>&nbsp; At any rate, even within the space of one career-so-far and a few short years, my own method of going about such things has changed completely. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That change was started by chance and necessity, as I realised after <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Giant-Thief-Angry-Robot-Tallerman/dp/0857662104/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;sr=8-1&amp;qid=1432233773" target="_blank">Giant Thief</a> got signed that I had exactly two years to write exactly two books and then flailed around trying to figure out some way to make that happen when my first novel had taken something like five years and more drafts that I'd been able to keep count of.&nbsp; Out of that flailing, though, came the beginnings of a process that worked for me, and that's <span style="font-family: inherit;">w<span style="font-family: inherit;">orked</span></span> ever since - ever since in this case meaning, for my recently completed fourth novel <b>To End All Wars</b>, two more books currently midway through redrafts and another that I've just begun.&nbsp; It's seen some refinement over that time, and there's <span style="font-family: inherit;">undoubtedly </span>room for more, but it definitely has its virtues too.&nbsp; And so, because I find this stuff interesting and therefore <span style="font-family: inherit;">conceivably </span>other people out there do too, I thought it would be worth sharing here.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Skimming lightly, then, over the very early stuff - an idea that digs in like a tick, that comes to feel like it has <span style="font-family: inherit;">meat enough on its bones</span> to stretch to novel length - we get to the preparation stage.&nbsp; Before even a word gets typed, there's a period of planning, floating ideas around, and depending on the subject matter, of research.&nbsp; So far this has varied from a few weeks to a year, (that being the book I just started, <b>White Thorne</b>, which is set in the Middle Ages, a time period that turns out to be even less like the current day than you might think.)&nbsp; The aim here is somewhat hard to define, and equally hard to set a timescale on, but basically involves reaching a point where the next stage feels like a practical possibility.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mBbCFWbqzQg/VV9mKz4Km1I/AAAAAAAABd8/e4YeBgkPOv0/s1600/Chimp_Typewriter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="255" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mBbCFWbqzQg/VV9mKz4Km1I/AAAAAAAABd8/e4YeBgkPOv0/s320/Chimp_Typewriter.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is not how I write novels.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">F<span style="font-family: inherit;">or t</span></span>hat next stage is writing the entire plot out in synopsis.&nbsp; By this point I'll at the least have a few major scenes in mind, characters, an idea of the tone I'm aiming for and the mental outline of a beginning, middle and end.&nbsp; In small snatches over the course of perhaps a month, I note down what I have and work to fill in the gaps, figuring out significant plot mechanics as I go.&nbsp; The end product here is a document of somewhere between five and ten pages that tells the story crudely but coherently from start to finish, that contains all the characters I'm likely to need - though not necessarily by name - and which another human being can read and take away a solid sense of the story from.&nbsp; In fact, that's one of its main purposes; with </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>White Thorne </b>especially I jumped on the opportunity to get feedback on plot mistakes before I made them, and it was such a huge help that I rewrote the synopsis <span style="font-family: inherit;">heavily on the<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="font-family: inherit;">back </span>of <span style="font-family: inherit;">the feed<span style="font-family: inherit;">b<span style="font-family: inherit;">ack I received</span></span></span>.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Either way, <span style="font-family: inherit;">once <span style="font-family: inherit;">the </span></span>synopsis is <span style="font-family: inherit;">at a point I'm happy with, <span style="font-family: inherit;">it will get </span></span>broken down into a chapter plan<span style="font-family: inherit;"> -</span> this being the key reason why it needs to be so detailed.&nbsp; This stage generally only takes a day or two, and basically involves figuring out all the little climaxes that would make for suitable chapter end points and then balancing that against what I can realistically cram into, say, five thousand words.&nbsp; One of the reasons it's a valuable process is that it flags up the structure<span style="font-family: inherit;">,</span> in so much as there is one at this point<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">,</span> </span>and emphasizes any weaknesses<span style="font-family: inherit;">.&nbsp; I</span>f there's a leg of what might be three chapters where not much happens, or a stretch of const<span style="font-family: inherit;">ant action without much <span style="font-family: inherit;">exposition, <span style="font-family: inherit;">say,</span></span></span> it will definitely show itself here<span style="font-family: inherit;">, a<span style="font-family: inherit;">nd with luck I can juggle scenes accordingly.</span></span> </span></span></span></span><br /><br />Which feels like a sensible place to break, if only because all this talk of writing novels is making me stressed about all those novels I should be writing.&nbsp; In part 2: all of that stuff!&nbsp; And everything that comes after...</div></div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/05/writing-ramble-how-i-write-novels-now.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-7955752964837551546Thu, 14 May 2015 15:08:00 +00002015-05-14T16:08:51.455+01:00Across the TerminatorBeneath Ceaseless SkiesCaretaker in the Garden of DreamsClarkesworldIll-Met at MidnightSharkpunkThe DrabblecastThe Shark in the HeartTwilight For the NightingaleXIIIShort Story News, May 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I've been a bit remiss in keeping up to date with short story news this last month or so, which is unfortunate because I've had an unusually large amount of stuff out.&nbsp; But it's nice in a way, in that now I get to post about it all together and it looks like I have a ton of stories out in great venues every month!</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DXmD2X_UXJw/VVOXaj20bTI/AAAAAAAABbI/A53vf_TPby0/s1600/SHARKPUNK%2Bcover%2B29-01-2015.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DXmD2X_UXJw/VVOXaj20bTI/AAAAAAAABbI/A53vf_TPby0/s320/SHARKPUNK%2Bcover%2B29-01-2015.png" width="209" /></a>Truth is, though, that even by the standards of the markets I've been lucky enough to sell to, this has been a really excellent selection.&nbsp; Taking them in chronologically reverse order, it was a mere couple of days ago that my weird horror tale <b>Caretaker in the Garden of Dreams </b>appeared in <a href="http://www.drabblecast.org/2015/05/09/drabblecast-359-trifecta-unnatural-growth/" target="_blank">The Drabblecast</a>.&nbsp; This is a story that's been around a bit, and this isn't even the first time it's been podcast - that honour goes to the now sadly defunct <a href="https://shadowpress.wordpress.com/tag/caretaker-in-the-garden-of-dreams/" target="_blank">Shadowcast</a> - and everywhere it's appeared it's been treated more than decently.&nbsp; <b>Caretaker </b>was editor's choice in the issue of <i>Necrotic Tissue</i> it appeared in, made their <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Necrotic-Tissue-The-Best-Anthology/dp/0615245285" target="_blank">all-time best of anthology</a>, got a terrific - and terrifically grotesque - <a href="https://shadowpress.wordpress.com/tag/caretaker-in-the-garden-of-dreams/" target="_blank">illustration</a> from <i>The Shadowcast</i> and this time around receives an absolutely brilliant rendition, with not only a<span style="font-family: inherit;">n evo<span style="font-family: inherit;">c</span>ative </span>reading from David Cummings of the <a href="http://www.thenosleeppodcast.com/" target="_blank">No Sleep Podcast</a> but some perfectly chosen sound effects.&nbsp; All bias aside, this thing is weird and creepy and I urge you to give it a listen!</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then, a mere few days behind that, and wrapped within that glorious cover over there, we had <a href="http://jonathangreenauthor.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">Jonathan Green</a>'s anthology <a href="http://storieswithbite.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">Sharkpunk</a>, which has been a part of my life for so long now that I'm almost sad that it's out.&nbsp; Still, it is, and it's brilliant, surely the definitive take on a beastie that was crying out for its own definitive anthology, and it's already garnering some gushing reviews.&nbsp; There's <a href="http://www.theeloquentpage.co.uk/2015/04/30/sharkpunk-edited-by-jonathan-green/" target="_blank">this</a> at <i>The Eloquent Page</i>, and particularly nice from my point of view, both <a href="http://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/4/post/2015/05/shark-punk-edited-by-jonathan-green-fiction-review.html" target="_blank">The Ginger Nuts of Horror</a> and <a href="http://www.geekplanetonline.com/index.php/reviews/books/item/23159-sharkpunk" target="_blank">Geek Planet Online</a> pick out my <b>The Shark in the Heart</b> for special mention.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mWoJmMuJ3oY/VU9d7oIh8wI/AAAAAAAABaY/w8EXhkmu_Bc/s1600/Clarkesworld%2BYear%2B7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mWoJmMuJ3oY/VU9d7oIh8wI/AAAAAAAABaY/w8EXhkmu_Bc/s320/Clarkesworld%2BYear%2B7.jpg" width="212" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Next is a bit of cheat, in that I suspect it's been out for a while now, but due to the tectonic slowness of the US to UK postal service I only recently got my contributor copies.&nbsp; Anyway, it's the anthology of <a href="http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/" target="_blank">Clarkesworld</a>'s seventh year, unexpectedly titled <a href="http://neil-clarke.com/books/clarkesworld-year-seven/" target="_blank">Clarkesworld Year Seven</a>, it contains my <b>Across the Terminator</b>, and of course it's amazing because it's bloody <i>Clarkesworld</i>.&nbsp; </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-taZO6KcBsn0/VU9eFfNCu5I/AAAAAAAABao/LkoOk6iPZYE/s1600/XIII_Front%2BCover.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-taZO6KcBsn0/VU9eFfNCu5I/AAAAAAAABao/LkoOk6iPZYE/s320/XIII_Front%2BCover.png" width="209" /></a>Then, lastly and not at all leastly, in that I'm only talking about it so late because I somehow hadn't entirely realised it was out, there's Mark Teppo's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stories-Transformation-Mark-Teppo/dp/1630230065" target="_blank">XIII</a> anthology from <a href="http://www.resurrectionhouse.com/" target="_blank">Resurrection House</a>.&nbsp; A curio this, in the best sense of the word, and perhaps more at the literary end of the genre spectrum than the kind of markets I tend to appear in, but in a world where there are people who still think editing yet another zombie anthology is an exciting prospect, it's so damn nice to see a theme anthology where the theme - transformation, rebirth and that titular number - is so unabashedly weird. <i>XIII</i> really is a treasure, and it received about the most thorough review I've ever seen at <a href="http://www.tangentonline.com/print--other-reviewsmenu-263/anthologies-reviewsmenu-107/2738-xiii-stories-of-transformation-ed-by-mark-teppo" target="_blank">Tangent Online</a>, which by the way has extremely nice things to say about my <b>Twilight For the Nightingale</b>. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oh, and speaking of people saying nice things ... let's end by pointing out that David Steffen recently picked out my story <b>Ill-Met at Midnight</b> for his top fifteen <a href="http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/" target="_blank">Beneath Ceaseless Skies</a> podcasts at <a href="https://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/05/podcast-spotlight-beneath-ceaseless-skies-podcast/" target="_blank">SF Signal</a>!&nbsp; If you haven't listened to it yet then it's still available <a href="http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/audio/bcs-110-ill-met-at-midnight/" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></span></div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/05/short-story-news-may-2015.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-888559289481131886Fri, 08 May 2015 18:33:00 +00002015-07-28T14:44:56.779+01:00Film RambleFilm Ramble: Drowning in Nineties Anime, Pt. 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">A month on and my inexplicable obsession with tracking down and watching nineties anime shows no signs of abating, even as the hope of discovering rare gems amidst the brightly coloured dross looks increasingly desperate.&nbsp; Still, it's proving an educational experience, and also a deal of fun, because say what you like about nineties anime but even during its worst excesses it's rarely less than entertaining.<br /><br />This week, the animated self-flagellation continues with <b>Bubblegum Crash!</b>, <b>Virus Buster Serge</b>, <b>Amon Saga </b>and <b>Rayearth</b>... <br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xTUGxkMgoEc/VUUr24c3pfI/AAAAAAAABZw/EUMG4hBPBnk/s1600/bubblebumcrash.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xTUGxkMgoEc/VUUr24c3pfI/AAAAAAAABZw/EUMG4hBPBnk/s1600/bubblebumcrash.png" width="222" /></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101514/" target="_blank">Bubblegum Crash!</a>, 1991, dir's: <span class="itemprop" itemprop="name">Hiroyuki Fukushima</span>, <span class="itemprop" itemprop="name">Hiroshi Ishiodori</span><br /><br />This came as a pleasant surprise after watching things like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107692/" target="_blank">Ninja Scroll</a>, in that it had mostly female protagonists and it didn't feel the need to treat them entirely like crap.&nbsp; But in retrospect, that perhaps gained it bonus points it didn't fully deserve, since none of those cast members were developed much beyond "this one's a pop star, this one's a stock-trader" and - maybe more importantly - they were still fighting in mech suits with built-in high heels.&nbsp; Still, it wasn't awful, and as I get deeper into this self-dug hole, the more I appreciate just how good "not awful" can be. The characters are likable, the action sequences energetic, and each of the three episodes is noticeably better than the last, until it all wraps up in satisfying fashion - though one that relies a little too heavily on familiarity with the series, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088863/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Bubblegum Crisis</a>, that <b>Bubblegum Crash</b> was a spin-off from. <br /><br />At any rate, of everything I've watched so far, <b>Bubblegum Crash</b> felt somehow most typically nineties-anime, and it's also my favourite example of the titling convention of flinging unrelated words together and expecting them to make sense, so that's something, I guess.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qVe0xsYTn7Y/VUUrxwRRNaI/AAAAAAAABZg/oNLKfS043ok/s1600/Virus-Buster-Serge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qVe0xsYTn7Y/VUUrxwRRNaI/AAAAAAAABZg/oNLKfS043ok/s320/Virus-Buster-Serge.jpg" width="256" /></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421480/" target="_blank">Virus Buster Serge</a>, 1997, dir. Masami Ôbari <br /><br />I can't quite rationalize my affection for <b>Virus Buster Serge</b>.&nbsp; Objectively I know it's barely a jot better than, say, <b>Bubblegum Crash</b> or <b>Detonator Orgun</b>, the latter of which it even has the misfortune of sharing a director with, the apparently somewhat infamous <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0643158/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1" target="_blank">Masami Ôbari</a>.&nbsp; And it's not exactly difficult to list its faults, which include a plot that starts at barely comprehensible and then proceeds to be as obtuse as it can, and some of the most eye-watering character design you're ever likely to witness - yes, her eyes are really that big! - which gives the entire twelve episode series the vibe of some twisted alternate-universe YMCA video. <br /><br />Still, I enjoyed it, and there's no question but that it gets a few things more or less right.&nbsp; In fact, it begins extraordinarily well, with a creepy introductory dialogue between disembodied voices that sets up the back story and a credits sequence with one hell of a good tune attached.&nbsp; Sadly, from there on in, things get more hit and miss: you have those ghastly characters, but the mecha and monster design is rather nice; a genuinely intriguing plot suffers from being delivered in nuggets of cryptic dialogue that pop up about once in every two episodes; the animation quality is hopelessly inconsistent, with terrible sections around the middle and a noticeable upswing towards the end.<br /><br />Taking all of that into account, I suspect that much of my unreasonable fondness for <b>Virus Buster Serge </b>has to do with the fact that it feels, in a few specific ways, like a demo reel for one of my all-time favourite series, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346314/" target="_blank">Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex</a> - and however many qualifications I might heap upon that statement, it remains a compliment.&nbsp; There's a vast gap between the edgy cyberpunk masterpiece that <b>Virus Buster Serge</b> wants to be and the camp, cryptic oddity that it is, but for ambition alone it remains an intriguing failure.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hAxh9Q1b1_Q/VUUrzdHiwjI/AAAAAAAABZo/eDRYsHulLSo/s1600/Amon%2BSaga.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hAxh9Q1b1_Q/VUUrzdHiwjI/AAAAAAAABZo/eDRYsHulLSo/s1600/Amon%2BSaga.jpg" width="233" /></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452130/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Amon Saga</a>, 1986*, dir: Shunji Ôga<br /><br />Another film that get's bonus points for being not awful, your tolerance for <b>Amon Saga</b> will likely depend on how passionate you are about hackneyed, eighties-style fantasy plots.&nbsp; For <b>Amon Saga</b> has barely a dash of originality about it anywhere, with the possible exception of the fact that the main bad guy travels around on the back of a gigantic turtle - a notion that would soon afterwards be ripped off, to slightly better effect, by arcade game <a href="http://www.gamefaqs.com/arcade/563980-golden-axe/images/screen-29" target="_blank">Golden Axe</a>.&nbsp; (Though the chronology makes such a thing impossible, <b>Amon Saga</b> feels exactly as though it was written while playing <b>Golden Axe</b>, which is probably an excellent measure of much you'll get out of it.)<br /><br />The frustrating thing is that it all starts quite promisingly, with a first act in which our titular hero works to get close to his nemesis by joining his army via a brutal gladiatorial initiation test. &nbsp; If the individuals elements are hackneyed and the animation rarely strays above functional, it at least feels like a fresh way into an old story, and one that promises some fun moral greyness; just how much evil henchmanery will Amon have to get up to before he seals the deal?&nbsp; Which makes it all the more disappointing when <b>Amon Saga</b> hurries to drop that whole undercover hero aspect in favour of&nbsp; more traditional Sword and Sorcery nonsense.<br /><br />Still, it's all quite watchable.&nbsp; And when the lackluster sword fights give way to a bit of magical dueling towards the end, things pick up so dramatically that you have to wonder why the animators made the film they did, given that they were clearly more invested in animating wizards doing trippy things to the insides of each others' heads.&nbsp; All in all then, no masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but not an unpleasant way to pass an hour and a half either, so long as you're basically sympathetic towards the cliches of eighties fantasy.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5prym6hCd0o/VUUr5UvsqaI/AAAAAAAABZ4/BhYbYSpQLpM/s1600/Rayearth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5prym6hCd0o/VUUr5UvsqaI/AAAAAAAABZ4/BhYbYSpQLpM/s1600/Rayearth.jpg" width="297" /></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168143/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Rayearth</a>, 1997, dir's: Toshihiro Hirano, Keitarô Motonaga<br /><br />Let's end on a film that could - with a little squinting and wishful thinking - be described as genuinely good: the OVA** of the series <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112057/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Magic Knight Rayearth</a>.&nbsp; It is, at any rate, a huge technical step up from a lot of what I've been watching lately, and a clear high point in <i>Manga Video</i>'s Collection series, which appears to have been a dumping ground for absolutely anything they could license at a knock-down price.&nbsp; <b>Rayearth </b>looks not unlike modern anime, it's animation is never less than adequate and often very good indeed, and while it never strays far from a great many anime cliches, the particular ways in which it combines them are at points genuinely thrilling.<br /><br />Still, it remains hard to get all the way past that sense of familiarity.&nbsp; In fact, with a plot that finds three schoolgirls trying to defend Tokyo with the aid of a magic cherry tree fairy and element-themed spirit animals that turn into giant, upgradeable mecha-beasts, <b>Rayearth </b>plays out like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210418/" target="_blank">Digimon</a> with an awful lot more blood and nudity.&nbsp; (I honestly don't know if that's a recommendation or a warning.)&nbsp; Plot-wise, a dense back story makes up for the fact that there's not much in the way of actual present story - the girls take turns worrying over not having powers, then get their powers, then get into scraps using their powers - and yet somehow it plays out quite satisfyingly.&nbsp; The third act revelations, when they come, perhaps don't warrant all the mystery that's come before, but sometimes it's fun to be kept guessing, and at least it all about adds up in retrospect.<br /><br />So, a qualified recommendation then, especially taking into account that, like everything here, you can pick up <b>Rayearth </b>for pennies.&nbsp; If you enjoy anime, there are worse ways to pass a couple of hours, and if you don't then ... um ... well done for reading this far, I guess.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">-oOo-</div><br />Looking back over this, it would appear that I enjoyed just about everything I've watched, whilst at the same time not considering much of it to be particularly good.&nbsp; Clearly my standards are dropping at a rate of knots!&nbsp; And given the sound of some of the things I've purchased for round three, that can surely only be a good thing...<br /><br /><br />[Other posts in this series: <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.html" target="_blank">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime_29.html" target="_blank">Part 3</a>, <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.html" target="_blank">Part 4</a>]&nbsp;<a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.html" target="_blank"> </a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />* Okay, so this one's a slight cheat, but it was released in the UK in the nineties, I think probably.<br /><br />** Original Video Animation, or straight-to-DVD feature, as I discovered when I finally got round to Googling it after twenty years of watching anime.</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/05/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-7902551728591386703Wed, 29 Apr 2015 19:19:00 +00002015-04-29T20:19:56.183+01:00Game RambleGame Ramble: Tomb Raider<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_o3k0jp1vNI/VTqOpXLoroI/AAAAAAAABZA/MfQjnffj6rE/s1600/TOMBRAIDER_60X80_Page_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_o3k0jp1vNI/VTqOpXLoroI/AAAAAAAABZA/MfQjnffj6rE/s1600/TOMBRAIDER_60X80_Page_1.jpg" height="400" width="301" /></a>In a way it seems unfair to pick on <i>Tomb Raider</i> - by which, let's clarify up front, I mean the 2013 reboot and not the 1996 original - as an illustration of the particular video game narrative failing I'd like to talk about here.&nbsp; It's a fault, after all, that a great number of games manage to commit, and have been getting wrong almost since the birth of the medium, and <i>Tomb Raider</i> is far from being the worst of the bunch.<br /><br />Still, not all of them have put that failing so front and centre, or emphasized it quite so pointedly in their marketing campaigns, and for me that alone has been enough to make <i>Tomb Raider</i> something of an exemplar.&nbsp; Because <i>Tomb Raider</i> the story, as conveyed in cut scenes and dialogue, is an entirely different beast to <i>Tomb Raider</i> the play experience, and not only do those two things not line up one damn bit, they actually spend fifteen hours working largely at odds with each other. <br /><br />Well, I say fifteen hours; it's in the first five that <i>Tomb Raider</i> most egregiously insists on saying one thing and doing another.&nbsp; Because this <i>Tomb Raider</i> is an origin story, or perhaps rather a coming of age story, but either way its role is to show us just how Lara Croft became the peculiarly cold-hearted raider of tombs and taker of lives that we know she will become.&nbsp; As such, <i>Tomb Raider</i> the story makes a big deal of the moment when Lara Croft, youthful grave-robber-to-be, first takes the life of another human being.&nbsp; I mean, a huge big deal; it's built up for a good ten minutes, if not the entirety of the game's opening, and the act itself is as bloody and traumatic as you could ever hope the sight of a teenage girl committing a shocking act of violence could be.&nbsp; We're made to understand that this is something that will stay with Lara until her dying days, that will cast its shadow over her every waking hour...<br /><br />...right up until the moment a few minutes later when <i>Tomb Raider</i> the game forgets it ever mattered.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lOrkpO7M1vg/VTqOkNIkjQI/AAAAAAAABY4/FC6n3tzEhvM/s1600/Tomb-Raider-2013-review-screenshot-10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lOrkpO7M1vg/VTqOkNIkjQI/AAAAAAAABY4/FC6n3tzEhvM/s1600/Tomb-Raider-2013-review-screenshot-10.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Empathize, damn you!</td></tr></tbody></table>An hour or two of game time later and you'll be merrily machine-gunning your enemies in the face, not to mention sniping them, shotgunning them, stabbing them in the back with an improvised climbing tool and setting them on fire.&nbsp; And though that violence isn't exactly pleasant, it's also every bit as frequent and fundamentally dismissive as the violence in a great many other similar games.&nbsp; On the one hand we're expected to sympathize with Lara's dehumanising struggle to survive and the fact that by implication there was a time when she didn't murder someone every five minutes.&nbsp; On the other, we're required to help her gun down literally hundreds of people.&nbsp; Frankly, even the finest plotting in the world might have difficulty making that one stick.<br /><br />It seems to me that, of all the problems that video games have to overcome before they make the shift from 'medium of pure entertainment' to 'entertainment medium that everyone is also happy to acknowledge as art form' is this particular disconnect, where story and game refuse to overlap.&nbsp; And this issue is fundamentally connected to other deep-rooted problems in the medium, in that most games still revolve around the act of killing, and it's hard beyond a certain point - increasingly so given current levels of visual fidelity - to portray that act, even when performed in self-defense, as sympathetic.&nbsp; I mean, I like Lara Croft, I do; we've raided a ton of tombs together over the years.&nbsp; But there are only so many times you can watch a teenager jab an arrow into another person's neck and still feel comfortable in their presence.<br /><br />What's the answer?&nbsp; Is there one?&nbsp; When these games sell by the kerzillion, does anyone actually care?&nbsp; Well, if nothing else, I'm confident that the answer to that last is a resounding yes; just look how many shooting-based games go to great lengths to disguise the nature of their cannon-fodder with masks, helmets, bandannas, sunglasses, or as essentially faceless robots or aliens.&nbsp; Or - as both example and one possible solution - consider how the colossally successful <i>The Last of Us</i> frames its narrative specifically around the self-corroding nature of violence, and along the way admits that there's something horribly wrong with its protagonist for continuing to commit the acts he does.&nbsp; <br /><br />That, though, is a trick you can only pull so many times - and therein, I suppose, lies my point.&nbsp; As long as gameplay is designed primarily around acts of violence, so video games will be obliged to tell stories primarily about violence, and so limit themselves to one shallow end of a very large narrative swimming pool.&nbsp; Even then, as <i>Tomb Raider</i> illustrates, to tell such stories convincingly requires a relatable human protagonist, and we're basically hard-wired not to relate to people who spend an overwhelming proportion of their time killing.&nbsp; <i>Tomb Raider </i>tries simultaneously to ignore that fact and to embrace it, and perhaps it's no wonder that it ends up fumbling both.<br /><br /></div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/04/game-ramble-tomb-raider.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-2255214886204149968Tue, 21 Apr 2015 12:18:00 +00002015-04-21T13:18:00.811+01:00Bill CampbellC21st GodsDuncan KayRosariumC21st Gods Are Near<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3yRzFciUJZM/VRmabDi6tqI/AAAAAAAABYQ/-m2uw3ellFI/s1600/dk_gods_temple_01_cover_small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3yRzFciUJZM/VRmabDi6tqI/AAAAAAAABYQ/-m2uw3ellFI/s1600/dk_gods_temple_01_cover_small.jpg" height="400" width="286" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The stars are nearly aligned.</td></tr></tbody></table>It feels like I've been working on <b>C21st Gods</b> forever.<br /><br />Or rather, I should say "we."&nbsp; For this project began with my artist friend <a href="http://duncankayart.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Duncan Kay</a>, there was never any possibility of anyone else drawing it, and for that reason, Duncan has been hanging on with this thing for every bit as long as I have.<br /><br />Which is a heck of a long time.&nbsp; I mean, what, four years now?&nbsp; And in that time <b>Gods </b>has been through plenty of iterations, growing longer and more complex with each passing take.&nbsp; Looking at the final script, it's hard to believe I somehow originally crammed it into a mere eight pages!&nbsp; In the end, though, a graphic novel felt like the only option that made sense.&nbsp; There were plenty of reasons for that decision, just as there are good reasons the book wound up running to three issues, and they don't all have to do with my story - though there's no denying it gains from having that room to breath.&nbsp; But no, the reason <b>C21st Gods </b>needs to be in its current form, the one it will finally see daylight in, comes down to one thing, and that's Duncan's artwork.<br /><br />Because for me, first and foremost, that's what this book is about.&nbsp; It's a story and a script I'm rather proud of, a weird little tale perched on the brink of horror and science fiction and poking at the soft flesh where those two genres meet.&nbsp; But that story and script have been designed from the ground up to be a showcase for Duncan's illustration work.&nbsp; It's gorgeous, is the thing; I love looking at it, so will other people, and one of my missions in life is to do whatever I can to make sure they get the chance.<br /><br />I realise I've gone all this way without explaining just how it's come to be that <b>C21st Gods </b>is close to seeing the light of day.&nbsp; And that's a story in itself, but here's the shortened version: I got talking to a guy by the name of Bill Campbell about some entirely unrelated matter, and during the course of that conversation I remembered having seen on Facebook that Bill had something to do with comic books.&nbsp; So we started discussing comics stuff, and it transpired that the reason Bill was an authority on the subject was that he was publishing them through his outfit <a href="http://www.rosariumpublishing.com/" target="_blank">Rosarium</a>.&nbsp; Within minutes I'd discovered that <i>Rosarium </i>was putting out some genuinely exciting work and that Bill was exactly the kind of editor I'd like to work with, and eventually I got around to pitching him <b>C21st Gods</b> - which as luck would have it was right then at a stage where it <i>could </i>be pitched.&nbsp; Needless to say, Bill liked it.&nbsp; And suddenly, after a mere four years, everything was in place for <b>Gods </b>to become a reality.&nbsp; If only things could always be so easy!<br /><br />That said, we've a ways to go yet.&nbsp; But finger's crossed, we'll have the first issue out by the third quarter of this year, with two and three following in close succession, and then - the main event! - the trade paperback, with probably some DVD-extra type stuff thrown in and definitely a hidden secret extra ending, because it's right there in the script.&nbsp;<br /><br />So watch this space.&nbsp; Or, I guess, maybe just watch the stars.&nbsp; Either way, <b>C21st Gods</b> are finally on their way.</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/04/c21st-gods-are-near.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-2544440458778973390Thu, 09 Apr 2015 16:36:00 +00002015-04-09T23:19:23.355+01:00Adrian FaulknerAnimeEasterconNewcon PressEastercon 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I have a soft spot for the <a href="http://www.johnbarras.com/pub/three-magpies-heathrow/c0475/" target="_blank">Three Magpies</a> pub at Heathrow.&nbsp; Their food is good, their prices are reasonable, their staff are awfully nice and friendly.&nbsp; In fact it's rare that I've gone in and there hasn't been some sort of wacky high jinx occurring, whether it be the bar staff shrink-wrapping the chef's car or everyone loudly explaining how the dishwasher has just exploded.&nbsp; What impresses me most, I think, is that, as the only pub just outside the busiest airport in the country, they could get away without doing any of these things; they could overcharge and be rude to people just like the hotel bars do and no one would ever bat an eyelid. <br /><br />I mention this for two reasons.&nbsp; Firstly because I ended up passing quite a large proportion of the weekend I was supposed to be spending at Eastercon in the Three Magpies, and - a not unrelated fact - secondly because everything I've just said is so great about the Three Magpies was not the slightest bit great about this year's Eastercon.<br /><br />I've got to admit, my expectations were at rock bottom before I even walked through the doors.&nbsp; I'd volunteered a couple of times to be part of the programming by then, and been ignored on both occasions; no polite "sorry, we just have so many potential panelists this year," just plain old-fashioned ignored.&nbsp; In fact, I'd had no communication whatsoever: no news updates, no reminder of the dates, not even anything to say that the programme was out.&nbsp; As I talked to other writers, it became apparent that none of these experiences were unique to me.&nbsp; More people, it seemed, were being cold-shouldered than weren't, and some of them were very big names indeed.&nbsp; Ignoring people who offered up their time for free was, it seemed, not a logistical error but an actual policy decision.<br /><br />Then the programme came out.&nbsp; And oh boy but did the programme explain a lot.<br /><br />Panel topics assigned apparently at random.&nbsp; Panels that were a mix of the endlessly overdone and the willfully obscure, with very little middle ground indeed.&nbsp; Far too many events that were a showcase for a group or individual and not much else.&nbsp; One small press author with a talent for self promotion appearing a staggering eight times.&nbsp; Religious ceremonies.*&nbsp; An overwhelming sense that the entire thing had been thrown together at the absolute last minute, whilst watching children's TV, drunk.**<br /><br />Now at this point I would normally admit that I was wrong after all and the whole thing turned out to be unexpectedly brilliant.&nbsp; Only this time, I wasn't and it didn't.&nbsp; It looked like a mess from a distance and it looked like a mess up close.&nbsp; It was, in fact, a mess.&nbsp; And quite an angry-making mess in the grander scheme of things, because it cost me a heck of a lot of money, money I could have spent on something else - attending <a href="https://nineworlds.co.uk/" target="_blank">Nine Worlds</a>, say - and not sitting in a pub in Heathrow. <br /><br />But, in that old spirit of fairness, here are some things about this year's Eastercon that were actually pretty good.&nbsp; The art dealer's room was solid, though apparently a step down from previous years.&nbsp; I heard nothing but positive things about the <a href="http://newconpress.co.uk/" target="_blank">Newcon Press</a> mini-programme strand.&nbsp; A few excellent films were shown, and in particular a pre-release copy of one of my absolutely favourite anime, the magnificent <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093207/" target="_blank">Wings of Honneamise</a>***, not to mention the recently released and nearly as marvelous <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2981768/" target="_blank">Patema Inverted</a>.&nbsp; <a href="http://adrianfaulkner.com/" target="_blank">Adrian Faulkner</a>'s talk on hurricanes and the chasing thereof was entertaining enough that it made me wonder if I shouldn't have gone to some of the other talks, dull though the programme made many of them sound.&nbsp; And there was the ever-reliable Barcon, in which I hung out with friends old and new, and probably took about five years off the life of my liver, but still managed to have a hell of a good time.&nbsp; Say what you like about Eastercon - and I have! - but it attracts a fine crowd.&nbsp; It's only a shame that this year its organisers chose to trap that crowd in a Heathrow hotel with barely a thing to do worth doing.<br /><br />Hey ho.&nbsp; Sorry to rant, people.&nbsp; Unsatisfactory science-fiction convention programmes may very well be the epitome of first world problems.&nbsp; Then again, this thing could so easily have been so much better, and there's an argument to say that shoddiness should always be called out, in the dim hope that maybe things will not be quite so shoddy again.&nbsp; I don't want next year's Eastercon to be like this one.&nbsp; I want it to be awesome.&nbsp; And so do a great many other people, I suspect.<br /><br />Positive note to end on?&nbsp; Um.&nbsp; Next year it's in Manchester, and Manchester's only an hour's drive away from me, as opposed to the six hours it takes me to get to Heathrow.&nbsp; Yay to that!<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />* I'm not saying that religious gatherings have no place at a science-fiction convention.&nbsp; Although, yeah, I kind of am.&nbsp; But even if I wasn't, might it not make sense to make it multidenominational, and so avoid pissing your inclusivity policy right up the wall?<br /><br />** I heard talk that it had in fact been finalized way back in December,which would actually explain the problems every bit as well.<br /><br /><br />*** Although, if there's one circumstance when I would absolutely argue for a trigger warning beforehand, it's when showing a film that includes a scene of attempted rape.</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/04/eastercon-2015.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-698333064791543761Tue, 31 Mar 2015 15:51:00 +00002015-05-29T10:31:29.059+01:00Alasdair Stuartpseudopodstockholm syndromeTwitcherTwitcher Up At Pseudopod<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">At the risk of repeating what I just said in that wholly unimaginative title, my zombie story <b>Twitcher </b>is now up at the world's favourite horror podcast site, <a href="http://pseudopod.org/" target="_blank">Pseudopod</a>, introduced by the marvelous <a href="http://alasdairstuart.com/" target="_blank">Alasdair Stuart</a> and read in fine style by <a href="https://about.me/robertosuarez" target="_blank">Roberto Suarez</a>.&nbsp;<br /><br />When <i>Pseudopod </i>asked me for a fact to share with their listeners, I mentioned that the title was a fortuitous gift.&nbsp; I'd recently finished the story and was having lunch with my then-manager, who asked me why I was staring out of the window.&nbsp; Not wanting to point out that I found his conversation deathly dull, I told him I'd been watching a bird hopping about, at which point he asked me, "you're not a twitcher, are you?"&nbsp; I replied that I wasn't, and indeed hadn't a clue what a twitcher was.&nbsp; When he explained that it was another word for bird-watcher, brain-gears clicked satisfyingly into place.&nbsp; My story, then called "Little Red Wing" in a nod to one of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPlUH_G7bC4" target="_blank">my favourite Tanya Donelly songs</a>, had a new name, and it was perfect. <br /><br />What I didn't mention, because it was something I'd forgotten until I listened to the story just now, was that <b>Twitcher </b>started life as a dream.&nbsp; In the dream, it was vampires and not zombies, but the basic elements - a bird-watcher guarding over rare red birds whilst the world went all to hell around him - were all there.&nbsp; True fact: for all the hundred times that dreams are weird and disturbing and generally horrible mind-vomit, there's always one you can recycle into a short story.<br /><br />You can listen to <a href="http://pseudopod.org/2015/03/27/pseudopod-431-twitcher/" target="_blank">Twitcher</a> here. &nbsp; It's positively, absolutely the last zombie story I'm going to write, because we're all bored sick of zombies by now, right?&nbsp; And this makes three now, <a href="http://pseudopod.org/2007/06/29/pseudopod-044-stockholm-syndrome/" target="_blank">one of which</a> was my first sale to <i>Pseudopod</i>, thinking about it.&nbsp; But hey, if you're going to listen to one David Tallerman zombie story this year, make it this one, because it's weird and catastrophically bleak and I'm rather proud of it.</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/03/twitcher-up-at-pseudopod.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-5728677371858974218Sun, 29 Mar 2015 17:38:00 +00002015-07-28T14:43:04.068+01:00Film RambleFilm Ramble: Drowning in Nineties Anime, Pt. 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">There are those who'll tell you that anime has never been the same since the nineties ended.&nbsp; Those people are idiots, and I would point them to - just off the top of my head, mind - works like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1474276/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Summer Wars</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2140203/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">Wolf Children</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0791205/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">Ergo Proxy</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1909462/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Fractale</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1690483/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">King of Thorn</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2309320/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">From the New World</a>.&nbsp; Judging solely on the basis of my recent watching, it seems to me like we've never had it so good when it comes to gorgeous, intelligent, adult-orientated Eastern animation.<br /><br />Yet, for reasons I can't explain* I've found myself drawn lately to broaden my knowledge of nineties anime, which, while it may not be the epitome of the form, is undeniably an interesting era in its development; the decade in which it really began to make inroads into the west, with classics like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094625/" target="_blank">Akira</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0156887/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">Perfect Blue</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119698/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">Princess Mononoke</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113568/" target="_blank">Ghost in the Shell</a>, and perhaps too the decade that defined many of the tropes it would keep returning to.<br /><br />Or maybe not!&nbsp; I argue here from a position of self-avowed ignorance, after all.&nbsp; I've seen the&nbsp; classics, and a few random oddities, but until recently that was it.&nbsp; So I guess this has partly been about filling the gaps in my knowledge; but also, let's face it, partly about chilling out with a load of insane Japanese cartoons about giant robots, dodgy tentacle-monsters and ninjas...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107692/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">Ninja Scroll</a>, 1993, dir: Yoshiaki Kawajiri<br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0442791/?ref_=tt_ov_dr" itemprop="url"><span class="itemprop" itemprop="name"></span></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mn3aNmCVpZw/VRGpbbuQm-I/AAAAAAAABXY/bgF0RdCP8WU/s1600/Ninja%2BScroll.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mn3aNmCVpZw/VRGpbbuQm-I/AAAAAAAABXY/bgF0RdCP8WU/s1600/Ninja%2BScroll.jpg" /></a>Speaking of which: <b>Ninja Scroll</b> is apparently regarded as something of a classic of its era, and it's not so hard to see why.&nbsp; It has a distinctive look, slick animation, particularly fun action sequences, some terrific character designs - its rogues gallery of weird villains are a constant source of pleasure - and an overall vibe of gothic grotesqueness that's strangely satisfying. <br /><br />That said, those are about the only things it truly nails. I've seen a few reviews that praise its plot, while baffles me, since there really isn't much of one: there's an evil scheme that needs uncovering before the final showdown, and it's developed in a somewhat non-linear fashion that someone somewhere might conceivably find confusing, but swerving a little on the way from A to B does not make you Tolstoy.&nbsp; On top of that, there are aspects of <b>Ninja Scroll</b> that date it for the worst possible reasons.&nbsp; In particular, it puts its female protagonist through a deal of unpleasantness - including a graphic sexual assault - that the film then makes use of in all the wrong ways, wasting an intriguing character in the process. <br /><br />Still, there's not a great deal of point getting into anime if you're not willing to enjoy a movie that's basically a string of kinetic, gloriously animated, imaginative fight sequences.&nbsp; And there's no denying that I <i>did </i>enjoy <b>Ninja Scroll</b> for the things it got right, which was plenty; it's just that at the same time a few conspicuous flaws made it tough to love.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101718/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Detonator Orgun</a>, 1991, dir: Masami Ôbari <br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4R4BuM2I148/VRGpbbMpOAI/AAAAAAAABXU/9Ld42Ipq_bo/s1600/Detonator%2BOrgun.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4R4BuM2I148/VRGpbbMpOAI/AAAAAAAABXU/9Ld42Ipq_bo/s1600/Detonator%2BOrgun.jpg" /></a>I was looking forward to <b>Detonator Orgun</b><i>.&nbsp; </i>Mostly because I'm a sucker for giant robots punching each other and because it was called <b>Detonator Orgun</b>, a title that positively oozes nineties animeness.&nbsp; I know what a detonator is, I sort of know what an Orgun is (although I surely wouldn't spell it that way) but put those two words together and I don't have a clue what it might mean, which is exactly the sort of nonsensical ambiguity I expect from my nineties anime titles.&nbsp; <i>&nbsp;</i><br /><br /><b>Detonator Orgun</b> did not much live up to its promise.&nbsp; Much of this can be laid at the door of its hero, Tomoru, who's an unbearable dick even by the standards of nineties male anime heroes - which I'm coming to think are not exactly high.&nbsp; I mean, look at him; I bet his favourite movie is <i>Top Gun</i>.&nbsp; Who's he waving at?&nbsp; What's with that hairstyle?&nbsp; Dick.<br /><br />However, as we'll see in a minute, anime movies don't live and die by how much you want to punch their heroes in the face.&nbsp; Sadly, Tomoru and his blue jeans and leather jacket combo aren't exactly unrepresentative of what's happening elsewhere in <b>Detonator Orgun</b>.&nbsp; The supporting cast are uniformly lifeless, and in particular it treats its female characters like crap, which by this point I was beginning to suspect was a definite thing with nineties anime.&nbsp; The animation is resolutely average, though it does come to life in the battle sequences.&nbsp; However even there, there are but three major tussles and the second is a reprise of the first, which makes it feel positively action-light when you've just watched something like <b>Ninja Scroll</b>.&nbsp; Likewise, it has the seeds of an interesting plot, the explanation of where its villains have come from being particularly gonzo, but since that only really comes into play in the third act it adds up to too little too late.<br /><br />It's a shame, because there's definitely a better film struggling to get out here.&nbsp; If the main character was less of a douche-sack, if the rest of the cast were given more to do, if half an hour of nothing much happening were shaved off, then it would be ... well, above average, at least.&nbsp; As it is, it's tough to recommend for anything besides its robot on robot action.**<br /><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0316156/" target="_blank">Landlock</a>, 1995, dir: Yasuhiro Matsumura<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mn3aNmCVpZw/VRGpbbuQm-I/AAAAAAAABXY/bgF0RdCP8WU/s1600/Ninja%2BScroll.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0IZuCxkzMvo/VRGqR59b3aI/AAAAAAAABXk/SRGEQ5ZiU5A/s1600/Landlock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0IZuCxkzMvo/VRGqR59b3aI/AAAAAAAABXk/SRGEQ5ZiU5A/s1600/Landlock.jpg" /></a></div>I came into this anime binge with no conscious agenda, and it was only when I watched <b>Landlock </b>that I began to realise just what I was after.&nbsp; For there are few things more satisfying for a film geek than unearthing a minor treasure that everyone else seems to have forgotten or&nbsp; overlooked entirely.&nbsp; <b>Landlock</b>, then, was my first real success story: no-one much seems to give a damn about it, but for me it was like a cut-price <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087544/" target="_blank">Nausicaa</a>, its imaginative fantasy shenanigans given a touch of class by some early <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masamune_Shirow" target="_blank">Masamune Shirow</a> character designs. <br /><br />Following its plot of gods warring - much of which occurs entirely off-screen - relies on paying close attention to one brief splurge of back-mythology and then doing a deal of mental putting together of pieces to figure out just how that relates to the events of the film.&nbsp; I found that brazenness charming; most other reviews seem to consider it irritating, or to have assumed the movie makes no sense.&nbsp; And possibly it doesn't, but I'm looking forward to watching it again with the hindsight of knowing the ending.<br /><br />Other than that, perhaps <b>Landlock</b>'s greatest weaknesses are an underdeveloped (though teasingly interesting) villain and perhaps the dullest hero and heroine of any anime film ever.&nbsp; But that sounds worse than it is, because the show gets entirely stolen within a few scenes by its supporting cast: the head bad guy's daughter, Agahali, who quickly cottons on to the fact that she might not be on the side of the angels, is particularly brilliant; but her henchman, Volk, who has such an enormous crush on her that he turns traitor at the drop of a hat comes close.&nbsp; It has a heroic entomologist, for crying out loud!&nbsp; What do people want?<br /><br />So while it's possible and even likely that <b>Landlock </b>is terrible, you know what?&nbsp; I'm recommending it anyway.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110426/" target="_blank">Macross Plus</a>, 1994, dir's: Shôji Kawamori, Shinichirô Watanabe<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cm5EyTBpyvw/VRbdiAoG7XI/AAAAAAAABX8/yHQRbLXnWpk/s1600/Macross_plus.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cm5EyTBpyvw/VRbdiAoG7XI/AAAAAAAABX8/yHQRbLXnWpk/s1600/Macross_plus.png" width="220" /></a></div>&nbsp;Another well-reputed movie, in this case one that's set within the universe of the equally reputable <b>Robotech </b>series, which I've had no experience at all with.&nbsp; <b>Macross Plus</b> comes in two forms, one episodic and the other movie length, and I've only watched the first so far; I can see it working better all cut together, but as it was, it left me a little cold.&nbsp; The conceit of fighter planes that turn into robots - often mid-fight - is tremendously fun, and makes for some thrilling, absurdly fast-paced battle sequences.&nbsp; But that most of those fights revolve around a love triangle in which none of the participants are particularly likable does take the edge off, as does the fact that both the men involved are supposed to be professional test pilots and yet spend all their time trying to kill each other in a years-old grudge.&nbsp; (Where I come from, we tend to fire our professional test pilots for blowing each other up over their shared girlfriend.)<br /><br />Speaking of which, by this point it will come as a surprise to no one that the female characters don't get treated with a great deal of respect.&nbsp; It's a particular shame here, though, because the B-plot - which follows the female lead and the galaxy's first AI pop star - spends much of its time threatening to go to far more interesting places than the A-plot, before they finally join up and <b>Macross Plus</b><i> </i>decides to opt for the most obvious route instead.&nbsp; Still, there's plenty to entertain on the way, and if the conclusion isn't exactly groundbreaking, it's a fair amount of fun nonetheless; frankly the technical values here are good enough on their own to keep the thing watchable.&nbsp; That goes double for the music, which is consistently superb; it's no wonder that, high-speed transforming dogfights aside, the moments that stick in memory are the outstanding concert sequences. <br /><br />Also, Bryan Cranston does one of the voices on the dub, which surely warrants a couple of bonus points.<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">-oOo-</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Right, that'll do for the moment - mainly because that's about everything I've watched so far.&nbsp; Despite some distinctly mixed success, the nineties anime bug hasn't unbitten me yet, so hopefully I'll get around to a part 2 in the not too distant future.&nbsp; Could there be more <b>Landlock</b>s hiding out there?&nbsp; I can but hope! <br /><br /><br />[Other posts in this series: <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.html" target="_blank">Part 2</a>, <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime_29.html" target="_blank">Part 3</a>, <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.html" target="_blank">Part 4</a>]<br /><br /><br /><br />* Well, I do know one reason: you can pick them up second hand for pennies.<br /><br />** Wait, that sounds wrong. </div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/03/film-ramble-drowning-in-nineties-anime.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-3982071673682102060Sun, 22 Mar 2015 17:47:00 +00002015-03-22T17:47:04.897+00:00Jonathan GreenSharkpunkReady to be Sharkpunked?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lpUhOsekYH4/VQgOBDCjDxI/AAAAAAAABW4/TDZS2lXDZiE/s1600/SHARKPUNK%2Bcover%2B29-01-2015.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lpUhOsekYH4/VQgOBDCjDxI/AAAAAAAABW4/TDZS2lXDZiE/s1600/SHARKPUNK%2Bcover%2B29-01-2015.png" height="400" width="261" /></a></div>I suppose that you could theoretically be a little cynical about a short story anthology entitled <i>Sharkpunk</i>.&nbsp; After all, haven't we had just about every imaginable form of punkage conceivable to the English language by now?&nbsp; Just off the top of my head, there's been Steampunk, Shakespearepunk, Dieselpunk, Monkeypunk, Banjopunk...* <br /><br />But, say what you like, there's something awfully appealing about seeing those two words stuck together.&nbsp; And as Jonathan Green explains in his introduction, it's long past time that someone reclaimed the not-so-humble shark.&nbsp; Forty years ago they were the greatest of movie monsters; now they're battling giant octopi and getting caught up in sharknados.&nbsp; I mean, in a world where sharknado can be a word, slapping <i>shark </i>and <i>punk </i>together feels practically obligatory.&nbsp; And perhaps that is the true punkiness of <i>Sharkpunk</i>: it aims to put sharks back where they should be, at the top of the underwater food chain.&nbsp; It's kicking against the pricks, only in this case the pricks are those guys who keep churning out lousy movies about sharks doing dumb stuff.<br /><br />Anyway, my contribution has nothing to do with any of that.&nbsp; It possibly doesn't have a great deal to do with sharks at all.&nbsp; It certainly contains the least punky shark ever to disgrace a body of water - in this case, a garden pond, which is also the least respectable home imaginable for a shark - and in short is about as far from the spirit of <i>Sharkpunk </i>as could possibly be.&nbsp;<br /><br />Or is it?&nbsp; Maybe being against the spirit of <i>Sharkpunk </i>is the most Sharkpunky thing of all?<br /><br />But no, it probably isn't.<br /><br />The point of all this - because, yeah, there's always a point! - is firstly to say that <i>Sharkpunk </i>is coming in not much over a month, and promises to be one of the year's most interesting, not to mention strangest, anthologies; and also to mention that I now have an interview up on the <i>Sharkpunk </i>site, which you can <a href="http://storieswithbite.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">read here</a>.&nbsp; Needless to say, you could count the number of sensible answers I came up with on a hand that a shark had just chewed all the fingers off.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />* Disappointingly, it seems I made three of these up.&nbsp; You'd really think Shakespearepunk would be a thing.</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/03/ready-to-be-sharkpunked.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-1872548112732252946Sun, 08 Mar 2015 16:58:00 +00002015-03-08T16:58:58.625+00:00Beneath Ceaseless SkiesIll-Met at MidnightOn Writing for Prompts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Lately I've been thinking about - and discussing with writer friends - the merits of producing work for specific markets, or for markets with very particular guidelines.&nbsp; By that I guess I'm mostly talking about anthologies of the "we only want to see historical stories about cybernetically enhanced chickens" ilk, though of course there are such things as work-for-hire and specialist publishers like <a href="http://rebellionstore.com/" target="_blank">Rebellion</a>, whose recent opening for submissions was one of the events that got me mulling over this in the first place.<br /><br />At any rate, it's something that in the past I've found myself arguing against pretty adamantly.&nbsp; A lot of that, it occurs to me now, goes back to how my first attempt at writing to a prompt went very badly - or very well, depending on how broad your perspective is.&nbsp; It was an anthology of fantasy stories about assassins, and I had a suitable idea ready to go, so I thought why not?&nbsp; It wasn't great money but it was okay, and it was an open enough premise that I figured I could always sell the story elsewhere if it didn't get picked up.&nbsp; But once I'd finished I felt good about the results, and hopeful that it might find a place.<br /><br />It didn't, of course.&nbsp; Instead I got a detailed personal rejection, based entirely on the first page.&nbsp; This was exactly as galling as you'd think it would be, especially since every criticism the editor had made would have been addressed if he'd bothered to read on a couple more pages.&nbsp; (It only occurs to me now to wonder if he lived all his life like this.&nbsp; Dating must have been a nightmare, unless people were wearing <i>really </i>nice shoes.)&nbsp; Anyway, as will often happen, it worked out okay in the end: I sold the story, which was <a href="http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/ill-met-at-midnight/" target="_blank">Ill-Met at Midnight</a>, for considerably more money to <a href="http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/" target="_blank">Beneath Ceaseless Skies</a>, and felt briefly grateful to an editor who thought judging stories on a single page was a viable thing to do. <br /><br />This experience, inevitably, coloured my perceptions.&nbsp; So, a couple of years later, did writing a story at an editor's personal request and to an extraordinarily specific mandate, for no money, which they then rejected at the last moment for reasons nothing to do with the story itself.&nbsp; The conclusion that both experiences led me to was this: I could write a story specifically for one market and have it rejected, or I could write a story that I <i>wanted </i>to write, that was appropriate for any number of different markets and, with perseverance and a little luck, sell it for as good or better money.&nbsp; Except that it was even worse than that, because writing for a specific prompt - especially an obscure one - was practically doomed to failure.&nbsp; Since well-paying anthologies tend to get flooded with submissions, my fantasy story about assassins had to stand against maybe hundreds of other fantasy story about assassins, and had proportionately less chance of standing out.&nbsp; Writing to a prompt actually decreased my chances of selling a story, and so seemed to me pretty much the definition of a mug's game.<br /><br />Anyway, as is often the way with these posts, I only mention any of this because I've sort-of changed my mind. To the point where a fair portion of last month and this one have been devoted to writing stories for specific anthologies.&nbsp; Is this the complete reversal it looks like?&nbsp; Um ... not exactly.&nbsp; But I've got to admit, I've seen another side to the argument, and that is, writing to someone else's pitch can be <i>fun</i>.&nbsp; It can also be inspiring, in a world where inspiration isn't always as close as you'd like it to be.&nbsp; In three cases since January, a stranger's suggestion kicked my brain into churning out ideas that I found myself helplessly eager to get down on paper.&nbsp; In one case that meant that something which had been rattling inside my brain for half a decade becoming suddenly clear and writable.&nbsp; But for the other two it was just sheer, distilled inspiration, the seeds of new stories manifesting out of nothing - and, man, I've missed that. <br /><br />So from now on, maybe I'll be a bit more open to writing for specific markets. Or maybe all three of those stories will get rejected and I'll go back to my old opinion.&nbsp; And perhaps the point here is more that no matter your writing practices, no matter the kinds of markets you favour, it's good to open your inspiration-radar up wide.&nbsp; I suspect that I'd forgotten a little just how much ideas can come from anywhere, but it's absolutely true, and it's no bad thing to let someone else's suggestions guide you every once in a while.</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/03/on-writing-for-prompts.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-837290799678778423Mon, 02 Mar 2015 20:23:00 +00002015-03-02T20:23:07.260+00:00Duotrope's DigestDuotrope's Digest, Three Years On<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: right;"></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nSPHDI7XuKA/VPIbZlAHRhI/AAAAAAAABV8/o83Crx1Ujh0/s1600/Duotrope%2BT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nSPHDI7XuKA/VPIbZlAHRhI/AAAAAAAABV8/o83Crx1Ujh0/s1600/Duotrope%2BT.jpg" height="313" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Helping the headless since August 2005.</td></tr></tbody></table>Somewhat over three years ago now, I wrote a post titled <a href="http://davidtallerman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/no-more-free-duotropes.html" target="_blank">No More Free Duotrope's</a> to commiserate the fact that <a href="https://duotrope.com/" target="_blank">Duotrope's Digest</a> - self-described as a "service for writers that offers an extensive, searchable database of current fiction, poetry, and non-fiction markets, a calendar of upcoming deadlines, submissions trackers, and useful statistics" - was moving from a donation-based model to a subscription-only one.&nbsp; I've been a user of, and a fan of, Duotrope's for more years now than I can be bothered to count.&nbsp; But having recently resubscribed for one more, and with doubts that I'll do so again come 2016, I thought that this might be the time to come back to the question I posed a third of a decade ago: is Duotrope's a good enough, vital enough service to warrant the $50 a year it currently costs?<br /><br />Inevitably, the answer is "yes and no" - but to that I may as well add straight away that, for me, it's now more no than yes.&nbsp; I said at the time that $50 was too expensive and lo and behold, it's still too expensive, a fact I'm feeling more now that writing is my only source of income.&nbsp; The thing is this: I'm not paying for the submission tracker because I have a spreadsheet that does that, nor for the calendar of deadlines because again that's easy to do myself.&nbsp; I'm certainly not paying for those useful statistics, since they're rarely terribly useful - but also for other reasons I'll come back to.&nbsp; What I'm personally paying my $50 for is the database and the market updates, and unless those provide me with sales well in excess of $50 to markets I wouldn't (and couldn't) have found out about otherwise, there's just no way I can justify the expense.<br /><br />There's a reasonable argument that 2014 scraped past that line, with sales to three anthologies I found out about from Duotrope's listings.&nbsp; But when I stop to analyze that, the picture quickly looks less rosy: it works out that I paid them about 14% of what I earned because of them, which is only marginally less than the rate an agent would charge.&nbsp; And if all an agent did was present me with a list of potential markets and say "knock yourself out," I wouldn't be paying them a thing. <br /><br />Perhaps, in a sense, that's both an unfair and an overly restrictive yardstick to judge Duotrope's by.&nbsp; Just because I'm not using all those other features, that's not to say they don't have value.&nbsp; Nevertheless, it seems to me that the moment a service becomes commercial, it opens itself up to such criticisms; clearly, most of us don't pay for something for no reason.&nbsp; The point where a service begins charging, in fact, raises a whole host of expectations.&nbsp; Three years ago I said that "maybe I'm wrong, and that extra cash will see Duotrope's develop into something even more marvelous" and I think what bothers me particularly is that that's exactly what <i>hasn't</i> happened.&nbsp; This may to some extent be a failing of memory, but I'm fairly sure that, but for a few aesthetic differences, the Duotrope's Digest of 2015 is largely the Duotrope's Digest of 2012.&nbsp; The added income appears to have done little but keep it ticking over, which feels unambitious from a site that once upon a time improved on an almost daily basis.&nbsp; In fact, more and more, it seems like a service stuck in stasis.&nbsp; It frustrates me, for example, that they're yet to amend their criteria of professional markets in line with the SFWA's not-that-recent revision; I realise the SFWA don't run the world, but since the Duotrope's definition for both short fiction and novels is exactly the same as the SFWA's old one, it seems a safe bet that that's where they got it from.<br /><br />Oh, one last grumble, while we're here.&nbsp; An obvious point of contention that the owners of Duotrope's acknowledged when they moved to the paying model was that anything which reduced the size of their user base would inevitably affect the quality of their data.&nbsp; The point has been repeatedly made that this isn't the case; Duotrope's even has a specific page called "state of the stats" that exists to deflect such criticisms.&nbsp; However, it also has a page that shows which markets have registered the most responses, and that tells a somewhat different story.&nbsp; In retrospect, it's one that should have been obvious: the quality of statistics for markets now depends greatly on how much they pay.&nbsp; For <a href="http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/" target="_blank">Clarkesworld</a>, with over a thousand reports made, they're probably rock solid.&nbsp; For smaller, lower-paying markets - or for markets that don't pay at all - it's a safe bet they're considerably less reliable now than they were three and a half years ago.<br /><br />Since I don't feel entirely good about sticking the boot into a service I've used devotedly for years now, I should finish by saying that at its heart Duotrope's Digest remains a profoundly excellent product. It's effective, intuitive, easy on the eye and has been constantly useful to me over the years; I have no idea how I'd have managed without it.&nbsp; And while I don't think that directly charging the user base was the right choice when it came to monetizing the site, it's not a service I actually begrudge paying for; I was, in fact, one of the few people who used to donate regularly back in the day.&nbsp; All I'm really saying is, Duotrope's is great, but it's not indispensable.&nbsp; And for me it's now too expensive for what it actually provides.&nbsp; If I'm going to be still using it in another year from now, it will need to be a damn sight cheaper - I'd posit $36 as a reasonable charge - or a damn sight more essential.<br /><br />I sincerely hope it ends up being one or the other, because if I'm forced to give up on Duotrope's Digest, I'm going to miss it.</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/03/duotropes-digest-three-years-on.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-967991290979675265Sun, 22 Feb 2015 19:49:00 +00002015-02-22T19:49:12.739+00:00SFWAThe SFWA Broadens its Horizons<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">At the start of February, some significant news broke - it seemed to me - rather quietly: after a referendum of its membership, the Science Fiction Writers of America overwhelmingly decided to amend their guidelines so that self-publication and small press credits would be recognised as qualifying criteria.&nbsp; How precisely that works is still up in the air until next month, but the gist is this: if your self-published or small press novel earned the qualifying sum of $3000 within a year of publication then it will count for joining the SFWA just as any traditionally published novel would.<br /><br />Many will consider this good news.&nbsp; Others, perhaps, will consider it overdue.&nbsp; Certainly it's been on the cards for a long time; as long, I suspect, as I've been a member.&nbsp; At any rate, my own feeling is that a good thing has happened, both for the SFWA and the writing world in general.&nbsp; To me the SFWA is a basically necessary organisation.&nbsp; At its worst, publishing can be one of the more cutthroat industries on earth, and it's crucial for creatives - a group of people traditionally not so great at looking out for their rights - to build communities and bulwarks to protect themselves.&nbsp; The SFWA is one of the oldest of those, and one of the few that wields meaningful power.&nbsp; It makes sense that it should set its borders wide enough that everyone who should be inside them is.<br /><br />On a similar note, any trade organisation is bound to benefit from a multiplicity of viewpoints.&nbsp; As an SFWA member, I absolutely want to hear the experiences of writers who've made successful careers within self-publishing and the small press, every bit as I much as I do those who've done the same through more traditional means*; despite what people sometimes appear to think, none of these paths are mutually exclusive, or even mutually incompatible, or really any damn thing but mutually beneficial, and I'd like to know that I'm getting the broadest range of expert advice I can.&nbsp; There are many routes up this particular mountain, and I'd hate to get caught in an avalanche because I'd missed a path that someone could have told me about in the mountaineers club house and argh, this is a terrible metaphor, I know nothing at all about mountaineering.&nbsp; I shouldn't even start these things, they never end well.<br /><br />Look, if it's not obvious by now, I'm happy to admit that I voted for the amendment.&nbsp; With books due from both a traditional and a small press publisher, not to mention plans to self-publish at some point, I have no horse in this race - or maybe too many horses, but let's not go there! - and I'd have found it hard to justify any other decision.&nbsp; The small press / professional press distinction is not a particularly helpful one in my experience, and it would be foolish in the extreme to suggest at this late stage that self-published novels are any less valid that those put out by the Big Five.&nbsp; Accepting that there have to be clear criteria for a professional organisation to be a professional organisation, surely setting a sensible bar is more productive than fussing about whether people are clearing it in the correct time-honoured fashion.&nbsp;<br /><br />In that regard, there's perhaps more work to be done - as I'll likely discuss one of these days, I still consider the SFWA's definition of professional rates to be shockingly low - but this feels like a huge move in the right direction, and here's hoping it's a sign of more positive change to come.<br /><br /><br /><br />* Although, let's face it, though the forms may change, the small press and self-publishing are both as old as publishing itself. </div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-sfwa-broadens-its-horizons.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-3145556137798069209Tue, 17 Feb 2015 16:52:00 +00002015-02-17T16:52:47.214+00:00Angry RobotLee HarrisPatchwerkPaul CornellTor.ComPatchwerk Sold to Tor.com<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">As is the way of publishing, I've been dancing around some big news for the last few weeks, until stars were sufficiently in alignment and ducks were appropriately in rows; but now <a href="http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/02/announcing-torcoms-inaugural-novella-list" target="_blank">the official announcement</a> has been made, and I'm in the clear to say that <a href="http://tor.com/">Tor.com</a> have picked up my debut novella, <b>Patchwerk</b>.&nbsp; Which is all sorts of brilliant news, because - well, because <i>Tor.com</i>, for crying out loud.&nbsp; Another one of my dream publishers ticked off the list, is what I'm saying.<br /><br />It also means I get to work with my <a href="http://angryrobotbooks.com/" target="_blank">Angry Robot</a> editor Lee Harris again, and to be part of a line-up that includes - as you would expect from <i>Tor.com</i> - some of the best authors writing today.&nbsp; I'm particularly geeking out to have my name in a list that also includes Mr <a href="http://www.paulcornell.com/" target="_blank">Paul Cornell</a>, one of my absolutely favourite creators, not to mention writer of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Endangered-Weapon-B-Mechanimal-Science-ebook/dp/B00DP64BVU/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1423754373&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=endangered+weapon+b" target="_blank">brilliant graphic novel introductions</a>.&nbsp; And on a personal level, it means a lot to me for a whole host of other reasons too.&nbsp; It's my first sale of a longer work since <a href="http://www.davidtallerman.co.uk/#!tales-of-easie-damasco/c4af" target="_blank">the Damasco novels</a>, and since I went full time; in that sense, it's huge reassurance for the future.&nbsp; By the same measure, <b>Patchwerk </b>was the fruit of a tough year, and as such absorbed that bit more blood, sweat and tears than it's slender thirty thousand words might suggest.&nbsp; Writing <b>Patchwerk </b>also pushed me well outside my comfort zone, and I had to up my game accordingly; so that it's been picked up by my first choice of publisher feels like a vindication.&nbsp; Once I invent time travel I now know that I can go back to my self of two years ago and let me know that it will all be worth it - whilst at the same time, of course, passing on a few choice lottery numbers and the secret of time travel, so that I can share it will all of my earlier selves too...<br /><br />Oh, and speaking of irresponsibly mad science, <b>Patchwerk </b>has a whole lot of that going on.&nbsp; My protagonist Dran Florrian is exactly the kind of guy who would invent a time machine to tip himself off about his own future, with all the inevitable awfulness that would involve.&nbsp; Only what he's <i>actually </i>done is to create a reality-emulating machine called Palimpsest, which as it turns out is probably that bit worse.&nbsp; Creating a device that copies aspects of other multiversal realities onto your own is, in fact, about as bad as an idea can be, however many safety checks you might build into it.&nbsp; At least it is if said device has a mind of its own, and especially so if you let it fall into the wrong hands...<br /><br />Which, I should mention, is only the beginning of <b>Patchwerk</b>, and from there things get much, much stranger.&nbsp; And that's all I'm going to say for the moment, because spoilers of course, but also because it's tentatively due out some time early in 2016 and I'll no doubt be talking about it a whole lot more between now and then.</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/02/patchwerk-sold-to-torcom.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-3904943072138870859Mon, 09 Feb 2015 15:57:00 +00002015-02-09T15:57:50.719+00:00To End All WarsZenoTo End All Wars Actually Really Finished<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">It's a truism that nothing you write will ever be entirely done - there'll always be another draft, proofs, copy edits, crying over missed typos when you finally hold the finished article in your hands - and its another truism that I have a bad habit of declaring things finished at every opportunity, even when they're clearly not.&nbsp; Nevertheless: as of last weekend, my fourth novel <b>To End All Wars</b> is effectively complete.<br /><br />That's to say, I've done three drafts, I'm happy with it, it's as good as I feel I can get it.&nbsp; Which means, from my point of view, that it's good enough to finally get packed off to my agents, <a href="http://zenoagency.com/" target="_blank">Zeno</a>, and of course I'm desperately hoping that in the longer term it will be good enough that someone will throw money my way for the privilege of unleashing it upon the world.<br /><br />I've come to think - and it took me a while to get to this realization, obvious though it sounds - that you should write the books you want to read.&nbsp; I mean, it <i>is </i>obvious, right?&nbsp; But perhaps it takes a certain amount of learning to get to a point where it feels comfortable, and to figure out exactly what it <i>is </i>you want to read and how exactly you get to go about producing that.&nbsp; At any rate, I'd like to hope that that's what I did with the <a href="http://www.davidtallerman.co.uk/#!tales-of-easie-damasco/c4af" target="_blank">Tales of Damasco</a>, but I'm really confident it's what I've done with <b>To End All Wars</b>.&nbsp; It brings together a whole lot of genres and influences and themes that I find&nbsp; interesting and then tangles them up amidst a setting I'm completely fascinated by: the First World War, but more specifically, the wider context of that period when Edwardian values were abruptly, transformingly assaulted by the horrible reality of industrialized warfare.<br /><br />And if that sounds a bit bleak and serious then I should probably emphasize just how much other stuff has gone into the mix, from adventure novels to a host of classic (and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion:_Earth_%28TV_series%29" target="_blank">some more obscure</a>) science fiction influences, to period dramas and country house mysteries, to stoic philosophy to ...well, you get the idea.&nbsp; Or perhaps not.&nbsp; Because something else I wanted for <b>To End All Wars </b>was that it wouldn't easy to pin down; I like the idea of a novel that constantly adjusts its relationship with the reader, challenging what they think it is and where it might be going, and that was what I tried to write: a book where even the genre might change from chapter to chapter to keep pace with the story's twists and turns.<br /><br />Anyway, I should probably not say any more, right?&nbsp; I mean, there's a lot of ground yet to cover; as with so much in the business of writing, this ending is only the beginning of the next phase.&nbsp; Suffice to say, I've finished my fourth novel, I'm pretty damn excited about the whole thing, and I feel like I've written a book I'd be glad to read if I wasn't the one who'd written it.&nbsp; That'll have to do for now!</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/02/to-end-all-wars-actually-really-finished.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-7527557755815728683Mon, 02 Feb 2015 18:17:00 +00002015-02-02T18:17:51.983+00:00FantasyConrafe mcgregorstephen theakerThe House That Cordone Builttheaker's quarterly fictionTheaker's Turns Fifty<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0C0dgp5zUj4/VM53PnOIHSI/AAAAAAAABT0/8qOM4aVWpFs/s1600/TQF%2B%2350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0C0dgp5zUj4/VM53PnOIHSI/AAAAAAAABT0/8qOM4aVWpFs/s1600/TQF%2B%2350.jpg" height="400" width="250" /></a></div>I have been writing, now, for oodles of years, he says, being purposefully vague because he can't be bothered to stop and figure out how long he's been writing for and also possibly because if he did then it would make him sound kind of old.&nbsp; The point is, I've been at this writing thing for a while now, I've been selling short fiction for almost as long as I've been writing, and in that time I've seen a lot of markets come and go.&nbsp; I mean, a <i>lot</i>.<br /><br />Goddammit, now I <i>am </i>sounding old.&nbsp; Maybe not that many.&nbsp; But more than just a few, okay?&nbsp; Enough, at any rate, that I've gained some insight into just how hard it is to keep a magazine going, month after month, year after year.<br /><br />For this reason, I have much admiration for Stephen Theaker for getting <a href="http://theakersquarterly.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">Theaker's Quarterly Fiction</a> to its fiftieth issue.&nbsp; That's no mean feat.&nbsp; Then again, nor can it be easy making a magazine as reliably good as <i>Theaker's </i>tends to be; and I'd imagine it's hardly a piece of cake to imbue that magazine with its own distinct character, something <i>Theaker's </i>has almost an overabundance of.&nbsp; But I think that what's impressed me most over the years is how every time I return to it, <i>Theaker's </i>has grown that bit more polished, to the point where this "most amateur of magazines" (Stephen's words, not mine!) has been looking awfully professional for a long while now.&nbsp; It's a hell of an achievement to produce fifty issues; it's an even bigger one for every one of those issues to be a little better than the last.&nbsp;<br /><br />As such, I got quite excitable when I ran into Stephen at last year's FantasyCon and he mentioned that issue #50 was on its way; so much so that I started immediately trying to force a story on him. Eventually we settled on a piece called <b>The House That Cordone Built</b>.&nbsp; It's old work, but it's a personal favourite that I was always sad not to have found a home for, and I gave it a hefty overhaul before I felt happy letting it out.&nbsp; It owes a lot to my possible all-time favourite short science fiction story, Heinlein's "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22%E2%80%94And_He_Built_a_Crooked_House%E2%80%94%22" target="_blank">And He Built a Crooked House</a>", a lot to M C Escher, and there's a bit of stuff in there about interregnum religious cults too, because I don't know why but there is.<br /><br /><br />Anyway, here's Mr Theaker himself with some talk about what's going on in the rest of his momentous, half-century issue:<br /><br /><i>"This three hundred and twenty-four page issue – our longest ever! – features fiction from many of our previous contributors, who have returned to help us celebrate fifty issues and ten years of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction: Antonella Coriander, David Tallerman, Douglas J. Ogurek, Howard Phillips, Howard Watts, John Greenwood, Matthew Amundsen, Michael Wyndham Thomas, Mitchell Edgeworth, Rafe McGregor and Walt Brunston!<br /><br />Plus reviews from Douglas J. Ogurek, Howard Watts, Jacob Edwards and Stephen Theaker. Stephen and members of the reviews team answer your questions in “Ask Theaker’s”! Cover artist Howard Watts takes us through his process in “Artful Theakering”! And there’s a round-up of everything Stephen Theaker read last year but didn’t have time to review! Happy fiftieth to us!"</i><br /><br />Yes indeed.&nbsp; If that's piqued your interest then you can go <a href="http://theakersquarterly.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/theakers50.html" target="_blank">here</a> to find a free copy in your format of choice. </div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/02/theakers-turns-fifty.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-2549620620806006933Sun, 25 Jan 2015 20:20:00 +00002015-01-25T20:20:47.063+00:00Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery MagazineCovenGaiaJonathan GreenNameless DigestOur World of HorrorPantheon MagazinepseudopodPurple Sun PressSharkpunkSnowbooksThe DrabblecastTwitcherXIIIShort Story News, Jan 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">It doesn't seem that long since I was grumbling about how I couldn't sell short stories anymore, and now, seemingly out of nowhere, I have an awful lot of stuff (by my standards) on the way over the next few months.&nbsp; Admittedly that's partly because a lot of my acceptances from last year have been taking a fair old while to come out, but still, this writing lark, eh?&nbsp; First you're up, then you're down, then you're somewhere around the middle, then you're standing at a bus-stop in Wales trying not to get smacked by some bloke dressed as a Stormtrooper.<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UtenZ-d0FdM/VMK0BG9wpzI/AAAAAAAABTM/CuAm9Fxk2As/s1600/XIII_Front%2BCover.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UtenZ-d0FdM/VMK0BG9wpzI/AAAAAAAABTM/CuAm9Fxk2As/s1600/XIII_Front%2BCover.png" height="320" width="209" /></a><br /><br />Anyhow, it now feels like I have more than enough stuff on the way that I should actually tell people about it, especially since there are a couple of things due out pretty soon, so here's the current state of play...<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>First up, I've a fair few stories in anthologies scheduled for the coming months.&nbsp; Almost certain to be first out of the gate is <b>XIII </b>from <a href="http://www.resurrectionhouse.com/" target="_blank">Resurrection House</a>, due in March and containing my <b>Twilight for the Nightingale</b>, (the one I keep referring to as my homoerotic supervillian story and then being surprised when that doesn't make people want to read it.)&nbsp; Then in April we have <b>The Hair of the Hound </b>- an older story but a personal favourite - in <a href="http://pantheonmag.com/" target="_blank">Pantheon Magazine</a>'s <i>Gaia: Shadow and Breath</i>, followed in May by <b>The Shark in the Heart </b>in <a href="http://storieswithbite.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">Sharkpunk</a>, to be released by <a href="http://www.snowbooks.com/" target="_blank">Snowbooks</a> and edited by the irreducible Mr <a href="http://jonathangreenauthor.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">Jonathan Green</a>.&nbsp; (Jon is in full-on promotion mode right now, so expect to hear a lot about this one, and maybe have a look at its official <a href="https://www.facebook.com/storieswithbite?fref=ts" target="_blank">Facebook page </a>or <a href="http://www.sharkpunk.com/" target="_blank">blog</a> or keep an eye out on twitter for @Sharkpunked and the <b>#Sharkpunk</b> hashtag.)&nbsp; After that we have a bit of a gap until August and <a href="http://purplesunpress.com/" target="_blank">Purple Sun Press</a>'s first ever collection, <i>Coven</i>, which includes my <b>All We May Know of God</b>, a sequel of sorts to the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Death-Gods-Chosen-James-Tallett-ebook/dp/B00KO705CM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1401690537&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=james+tallett" target="_blank">also-anthologised</a> <b>No Rest For the Wicked</b>.&nbsp; Last up, due to a date not having been announced yet, there's <a href="http://www.eldritchpress.com/" target="_blank">Eldritch Press</a>'s <i>Our World of Horror</i>, and my twisted tale of sort-of sibling rivalry <b>Br(other)</b>.</li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2ugQpIHwetU/VMKvb3XM1pI/AAAAAAAABTE/FdglT9Adm90/s1600/Gaia%2BShadow%2Band%2BBreath.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2ugQpIHwetU/VMKvb3XM1pI/AAAAAAAABTE/FdglT9Adm90/s1600/Gaia%2BShadow%2Band%2BBreath.jpg" /></a><li>Elsewhere, I've a couple of stories waiting to be podcast, one new - <b>Twitcher </b>at <a href="http://pseudopod.org/" target="_blank">Pseudopod</a>, due on the exceedingly specific date of March 27th - and one old, namely <b>Caretaker in the Garden of Dreams</b>, to be published for the fourth time and podcast for the second at <a href="http://www.drabblecast.org/" target="_blank">The Drabblecast</a>, though without a date as yet.</li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>As for magazines, it would seem a shame not to start with this year's most exciting anniversary: the oft-great and always bonkers <a href="http://theakersquarterly.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">Theaker's Quarterly Fiction</a> is about to hit its fiftieth issue, and my equally bonkers, Escheresque Sci-fi story* <b>The House That Cordone Built</b> will be within its pages. </li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Honestly, I've never been as gobsmacked by a sale as I was when <a href="http://www.themysteryplace.com/ahmm/" target="_blank">Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine</a> accepted my story <b>Step Light</b>.&nbsp; It's my one and only stab at writing&nbsp; Crime short fiction, I had no idea if it was any good, and I only had the temerity to send it to <i>AHMM</i> because I'd run out of other ideas.&nbsp; Selling to one of Dell Publishing's magazines has been on my writing bucket list forever, but I always imagined that if it ever happened it would be <a href="http://www.asimovs.com/2015_02/index.shtml" target="_blank">Asimov's</a> or <a href="http://www.analogsf.com/2015_03/index.shtml" target="_blank">Analog</a>.&nbsp; Like I said ...writing, huh?&nbsp; It's a weird old business.</li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>And last up only because it has the word "last" in the title (and because I only found out about it half way through the post) my kinda-steampunk Fantasy story <b>Last Call</b> is going to be in <a href="http://www.namelessdigest.com/" target="_blank">Nameless Digest</a>, though that's about all the details I know as yet.</li></ul>So that's it for the moment.&nbsp; And perhaps it's a good job, too, because for the absolute first time ever I'm starting to run low on things to sell. <br /><br />Better get on writing, I suppose...<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />* And, it occurs to me now, blatant homage to Heinlein's glorious <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22%E2%80%94And_He_Built_a_Crooked_House%E2%80%94%22" target="_blank">"And He Built a Crooked House"</a>, even right down to the title.<br /><br /></div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/01/short-story-news-jan-2015.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9819307466394406.post-9087260304865234578Sun, 18 Jan 2015 20:09:00 +00002015-01-18T20:09:37.840+00:00After DeathBram Stoker AwardsBull SpecDark Tales of Lost CivilisationsDuncan Kayflash fiction onlineNightmareSpectral PressWar of the RatsAnnouncing The War of the Rats<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">As their officially delegated spokeshuman, it falls upon me to announce that the rat populace of the world is - as of this date, the 18th of January 2015 - declaring total war upon the human population of the Earth.&nbsp; They've had enough, frankly, and they're just not going to take it any more.&nbsp; Pack your bags, people, and start looking for another planet with more placid rodents, because as of tomorrow this one is officially Ratworld Prime.<br /><br />No, wait, that's not at all what this post was supposed to be about. &nbsp; (Shuffles notes.)<br /><br />Hum.&nbsp; Okay.&nbsp; So, I mentioned a few incoming projects in my round-up of last year, and it was a huge relief, because all of them were things I've been getting horribly excited about for ages now and not been able to talk much about.&nbsp; And, thinking about it, a couple of them still fall into that category - though hopefully for not too much longer - but there's one at least that I can finally announce, and so this is me doing just that.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_zmhIteXcr4/VLV3CP9hHSI/AAAAAAAABSc/-U4XVs1Of-U/s1600/Sign%2Bin%2Bthe%2BMoonlight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_zmhIteXcr4/VLV3CP9hHSI/AAAAAAAABSc/-U4XVs1Of-U/s1600/Sign%2Bin%2Bthe%2BMoonlight.jpg" height="320" width="233" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here's one of the illustrations we DIDN'T use.</td></tr></tbody></table><b>The War of the Rats and Other Tales</b>, as it's tentatively known, is my first single-author collection of short fiction.&nbsp; It's coming out from <a href="https://spectralpress.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Spectral Press</a>, (you know <i>Spectral</i>, they get nominated for British Fantasy Awards with alarming reality and have or are due to publish work by most of the top writers in British horror,) in August of this year, in e-book, paperback and super special, limited edition hardback.&nbsp; And all of those editions will include illustrations by my artist mate and long term collaborator Duncan Kay, who seems to get better by the month and is currently sending me stuff that, frankly, would make your toes curl.&nbsp; Seriously, there's a reason I've wrangled Duncan into two of my major releases for this year, and that reason is that he's shockingly good at this illustrating lark.&nbsp; Whatever else <b>The War of the Rats and Other Tales</b> is, it's going to look beautiful.<br /><br />That possibly means that I run the risk of my stories being upstaged in my own first short story collection; still, if readers manage to tear their eyes from the pictures, I'm hopeful that some of my all-time best fiction is going into this thing.&nbsp; I mean, we have stories that have appeared in some of my favourite markets: places like <a href="http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/" target="_blank">Nightmare</a>, <a href="http://bullspec.com/" target="_blank">Bull Spec</a>, <a href="http://flashfictiononline.com/main/" target="_blank">Flash Fiction Online</a>.&nbsp; We've got a tale that was in a <a href="http://ericjguignard.com/dark_tales.html" target="_blank">Stoker-nominated anthology</a>, another that was in <a href="http://ericjguignard.com/after_death.html" target="_blank">last year's Stoker winner</a>, (which, by the way, also happens to be my personal choice for the best horror story I've written.)&nbsp; Maybe most exciting for me, we have my <i>Spectral </i>novelette, previously only available in very limited edition, and a new novelette written at the end of last year especially for the collection.<br /><br />That one's called <b>The War of the Rats</b>, funnily enough.&nbsp; And it isn't about rats declaring war on humanity.&nbsp; I just made all of that up.<br /><br />Or ... did I?<br /><br />No, I did.</div>http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com/2015/01/announcing-war-of-rats.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Tallerman)0